16 Remodeling Tips to Follow When Renovating Your Home
You want to renovate green and you want to do it sustainably and cheaply. Here are some tips.
furniture
Understanding Organic Mattress Labels
Is it bamboo, cotton, sustainably harvested, organically grown? Know your labels when you buy a new mattress
Adital Ela’s Terra stools and lamps are foot-stomped furniture that composts
Inspired by an Indian tradition of serving chai tea in clay cups, Israel’s Adital Ela has designed Terra – an entire line of interiors made out of nothing but foot-stomped earth!
Design School Partners with Wineries to Give Wooden Barrels a Second Life
I used to be a wine barrel… and now I’m a chess board. Wine companies worldwide may be trying to ‘go green’ by producing organic wines (the wineries of the Middle East being no exception), but even so there is non eco-friendly waste associated with making vino. A winery in the Israeli Negev desert has […]
Cardboard Interior Design Upgrades Community Lobby
With some creativity and design aesthetic, cardboard box forts are taken to a whole new level. Cardboard is becoming an eco-friendly material of choice for furniture design, and sustainable designers have put it to many uses. It is used both for chic contemporary cardboard thrones as well as cardboard cribs and doll cradles. Bringing cardboard […]
Recycled Furniture by Lebanon’s Niloufar Afnan
Long live the queen, if she can manage to sit on Niloufar Afnan’s recycled ‘Royal Stool’. At this year’s New Designers Exhibition in London, Lebanese-born designer Niloufar Afnan decided to poke a little fun at the royal family and demonstrate the possibilities of upcycled furniture. She exhibited Royal Stool (pictured above) and 46 (shown after […]
Ugly Plastic Window Shutters Become Chic, Minimalist Furniture Pieces
These plastic window shutters by Kulla Industrial Design can still be used to sit on. Finding new uses for old wooden window shutters has been a standard upcycling move among sustainable designers for years (check out the wooden shutter chairs made by Tel Aviv’s Junktion Studio). Wooden shutters have been turned into tables, doors, and […]
Raw Bamboo Bench is Green, But Is It Comfortable?
Bamboo is universally praised as a sustainable material, but when used in its rawest form is it comfortable? Beauty has been said to increase sustainability, but what about ease of use? We’ve seen a few sustainable bench designs out there already, from Yoav Avinoam’s sawdust bench to Green Lullaby’s cardboard work bench – but never […]
Sanserif Creatius Brings Recycled Cardboard Furniture to UAE
Thanks to a recent feature in Sadiyaty Magazine, residents of the UAE may soon be interested in recycled cardboard furniture. The latest issue of Sadiyaty Magazine, an Arabic publication on design trends and fashion, featured design team Sanserif Creatius’s cardboard Valentina throne chair – and no wonder. The Spanish designers at Sanserif Creatius are enamored […]
Paper Carton Furniture Is No Pulp Fiction
Paper pulp furniture is stronger than it looks. Bamboo has been praised for several years as the most sustainable material for furniture (due to its quickly renewable nature), with cardboard coming a close second due to its recycled and recyclable form. At first thought cardboard may not sound very strong, but when you think about […]
Studio Ubico’s Furniture Collection Reincarnates Wood Into Trees
Studio Ubico has upcycled found wooden pieces back into their original form, a tree. Studio Ubico, an upcycling and environmentally conscious design studio working in Tel Aviv, joins the ranks of other sustainable designers who are trying to make good use out of materials that are already sourced (instead of going out and taking more […]
Michael Tsinovsky Puts Arabic Into Israel’s Melting Pot
Industrial designer Michael Tsinovsky brought together Israel’s many local styles in his ‘asli’ furniture design. When it comes to consumerism, local is almost always better for the environment and for the local economy. Local is better when you’re buying produce at the farmer’s market, when you’re supporting local artisans and craftsmen, and when you’re purchasing […]
Ikea Increases Israeli Design Awareness, but What About Sustainable Design?
After ten years in Israel, what is Ikea’s regional legacy? When the Swedish affordable home furnishing company, Ikea, came to Israel ten years ago, it filled a void. The store filled the need for a more approachable, affordable place for Israelis to furnish their homes and experiment with interior design. Former Ikea Israel CEO Dov […]
Ezri Tarazi Manifests Israeli’s Conflict Identity With Recycled Design
Ezri Tarazi’s recycled design also draws important attention to how much conflict informs the Israeli identity. Any visitor to Jerusalem can attest to a palpable tension, an energy, if you will, that scrunches together hundreds of years of political and religious positioning. That same aura rises above almost every Israeli and Palestinian home. And it […]
Make your own non-toxic home cleaning products
Some essential and basic "green" cleaners for the house - for wood, the kitchen sink and even the toilet bowl.