Making the (Urban) Jungle Grow: Israeli Designer Kobi Nakav Proposes a New Square Hanging Plant

For some reason my mother always hated hanging plants. And clutter. And collecting things. And although I admire her from here to the moon and back – and learned a great deal from her as well, especially in the taste department – it took one Israeli design student to question her authority.

Well, not really but I knew it would get a rise out of her. Check out the superneato square cork hanging plant by Israeli industrial design student Kobi Nakav. Featured at the Designed in Israel 08 exhibition last week as part of the Future Designers section, Nakav strives to bring the outdoors in with this innovative and modern proposal for growing greener interior pastures.Fashioned like picture frames, the square cork is fitted onto a plastic receptacle to allow for watering and bulbous at the base to account for plant growth space.

They fit together like chains and can even be lined up to form a sort of interior screen of plants and cork, as if recreating an indoors urban jungle. The open links also blow in the wind as well, recalling the more natural state of growth, plant and the outdoors – something unattainable from regular hanging plants.

Among the up-and-coming designers featured at the fair, this was among my favorite pieces for so many reasons – one of them including the eco-friendly angle.As opposed to others who tried hard to work with environmental themes or materials (cardboard “pop up” furniture by Lev Meital or a website with instructions for making paper jewelry by Krin Nir) recycling or reusing, Nakav’s work was the only one that dealt with the subject at hand – ie. preserving green spaces – within a smart, thoughtful and classic design aesthetic.

I hope it’s only a matter of time before we can replant the green in our own urban jungles.::Crossposted to Designist Dream::