Tiffany has a great post on the state of the art in diy shoes from scrap tires, including a link to this pattern for cutting sandals from a slab of reused rubber (above) and this link to purchase up-cycled Cambodian tire sandals from the Old Ho Rubber Sandal Company: To replace your Old Ho’s straps […]
Category Archives: open objects
light noodles
Charlie Davidson’s Hasta la Pasta is part of the redesign (tagline: for designers who don’t want to make landfill) Lighten Up collection of lamps that have vastly reduced environmental impact. Making products out of food – like these spoons and these espresso cups – guarantees that they compost well and affords alternative uses – especially […]
design it yourself
Enzo Mari‘s 1974 Autoprogettazioni (Design and build-it-yourself projects) are simple schemes for tables and chairs that can be made from scrap wood in a variety of proportions and configurations. You can follow the designs or even buy complete kits, but you don’t have to: just looking at these images allows the designs to be freely […]
DIY vase
Enzo Mari’s Ecolo’ vase kit is a gift and a method: it contains four household plastic containers artfully cut up into flower vases, and it prompts you to do the same with all of the other plastic containers you might throw out.
being wrong
Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles is a remarkable feat for a fashion company: a visualization of their products’ global supply chains on a map, along with videos of each step in the manufacturing process, and descriptions of each item in terms of distance traveled, CO2 emissions, waste generated and energy consumption. Not only is it impressive that […]
free art
The works of Felix Gonzalez-Torres are unsettling in a number of ways: first, because you are encouraged to take a piece of the art on display (in these cases, at Art Institute of Chicago). It’s not common to touch, even less to take away artwork from a museum. Second, because the pile diminishes as you […]
design for durability
The OLPC has driven important innovations in open software, hardware, universal design and environmental sustainability in order to be cheap and durable enough for widespread use in developing countries. At this week’s unveiling of new designs for second-generation laptops, I spotted this interesting exhibit on the design touches that make the OLPC stand out in […]
open threads 3
Burdastyle is an open-source sewing resource where members upload patterns and visitors can consult instructional references (below) or download pdf patterns (above). By providing instructions for how to sew at the same time as open source ‘code’ for what to sew the site is a real open source free fashion resource. As with free software, […]