Interior Design Ideas: 'How to' do Stylish Sustainability (P2)
INTERIOR DESIGN IDEAS: HOW TO DO STYLISH SUSTAINABILITY -PART 2
In Part 1 we featured two important factors driving the Interior Design sustainability agenda:
1) Finding trusted sustainable brands and partners.
2) Is sustainable design stylish design?
We are on a mission to break down these myths and bring you design ideas that rethink this notion. We hope you enjoy part 2 as we explore stylish sustainability.
FINDING TRUSTED SUSTAINABLE BRANDS AND PARTNERS...
Below we bring you another top ten list of brands and designers show-casing fantastic sustainably designed products with a focus on craftsmanship:
1. www.greentulip.co.uk | Hybrid Bamboo Coasters
This family run online business is a real ‘super gem’. They source ethical gifts and crafts, the majority of which are handmade unique pieces you would struggle to find in larger department stores. Our top pick goes to the Hybrid Bamboo coasters. The design is super modern, and the wood grain is simply sublime! It is definitely worth a browse around this website as there is much to see and enjoy!
2. www.wearthlondon.com | Bamboo Coral Reef Design Serve-ware
We love this online retailer’s sustainably sourced home-wares. We particularly love the website filter categories that allow for product searches such as: ‘made in the UK’ ‘Social Contribution’ & ‘Refillable’. Noteworthy items: the sustainable furniture designs, retro and trendy designs with chic colour palette’s (cobalt blue and teal).
3. www.naturalcollection.com | Matamba Vase Collection
The monochrome design of these pots is simply stunning! Handmade using ancient potting techniques, the Matamba fair trade ceramic range from Nkuku are perfect for housing indoor plants or freshly cut flowers. The striking design is etched using traditional wooden tools and hand painted with a black glaze that makes these elegant bulb shaped vases display beautifully.
4. www.nkuku.com | Mango Wood Candlestick Crackled Lamp (Black)
This Devon based company offers wonderful and uniquely crafted accessories, lighting and furnishings. Our particular favourites are the candlestick mango wood table lamps in black, they look so chic and have a crackled effect. The lamps are created from sustainable mango wood. The mango trees are initially grown for their fruit and harvested over a number of years. Once the trees have stopped bearing fruit, they can be cut down and used to make wooden pieces. This allows the farmers to plant more trees and provides them with a sustainable, supplementary income.
5. www.fabelab.com | Organic Cotton Bedding Sets
We all know Danish Design is always ahead of the curve. This little online boutique store produces some really beautiful and quirky sustainable pieces, especially for children. Our top pick is the organic bedding sets with irresistible white piping and earth toned Ochre’s and Olive colour palette’s. So delightful!
6. www.myakka.co.uk | Colour Pop Rugs
With a contemporary spin on Fair-trade, Myakka has a varied range of furniture and home-ware with something for all tastes. It seeks out small and medium-sized companies that provide safe, healthy and supportive workplaces e.g. one supplier employs 70 people near Delhi, India. ‘Sold Out’ is a familiar sign on this website, the intricacy and craftsmanship of the hand-made furniture items is exquisite. We love, love, love! the hand-loomed and printed rugs, runners and kilims with pops of colour and patterns.
7. www.kreisdesign.com by Nikki Kreis | ‘Shelfie Love’ Shelving
We love the way everything is presented with close ups of the finer design details, re-emphasising how everything is hand-made with love. Kreis Design are renowned for their range of contemporary plywood Peg-Shelves made from sustainably sourced plywood. Both practical and functional, these shelves offer well thought out space saving design.
8. www.aerende.co.uk | Life Improving Home-wares: Conscious Crockery
Aerende is an online shop selling beautiful products and gifts for the home. All products are made in the UK by people facing social challenges. It is a special website where you can find a range of carefully crafted products from around the British Isles, all created by people with courage, who are struggling to access or maintain conventional employment. This non-profit organisation was founded in 2016 by Emily Mathieson, a former travel editor for The Guardian, Condé Nast Traveller and Red. A passion for beautiful, useful, locally made home-wares led her to question the lack of high-quality options in the ethical interiors sector. We adore the ethos behind this company and the products are outstanding. Our favourites are the conscious crockery; in particular the Teal and Grey fruit-bowl and the Opal shaded tea-light holder. We salute your cause Emily!
9. www.resolve.co.uk | The Barisieur: Coffee Maker Experience
Award-winning lifestyle and home-ware brand Joy Resolve continuously strives to balance user happiness with ambitious, sustainable design. Targeting both style and sustainability they have created the world’s first coffee table crafted from recycled coffee. Sourcing grounds from London coffee shops, they are processed and combined with plastic, recycled from packaging, to create a surface material resembling an appearance of bronze stone. The next chapter Barisieur is a lovely automatic coffee or tea brewer that eases you into the day with the sound of bubbling water and the smell of freshly brewed coffee or loose leaf tea. The brewer encourages you to have a ritual routine, either in the morning or before going to sleep, where you can make creating your coffee or tea a wonderful experience.
10. www.thefuturekept.com | 100% Recycled British Made Throw
This company has a delightful array of sustainably sourced wares. Our favourite style steal is the British made recycled 100% wool blanket, made from all the excess material and yarn left over from the production of other blankets. They have created a unique, Eco-friendly, British made throw for the purchaser. The kaleidoscope of colours in the throws are beyond words, have a look… divine!
IS SUSTAINABLE WOOD TRANSFORMING HALLWAYS?...
Sustainable wood is helping people to re-think Interior Spaces, especially hallways and commercial lifestyle venues. The newest word on the street is Accoya, which provides compelling environmental advantages over scarce slow growing hardwoods, woods treated with toxic chemicals and non-renewable carbon intensive materials such as plastics, steel and concrete. The sustainability of wood varies, but it is the certifications that Accoya has been awarded which help to provide customers with fully sustainable assurance. In the UK and the USA, Accoya has been awarded cradle to cradle gold certifications.
Cradle to Cradle (C2C) is a design philosophy developed by Michael Braungart and William McDonough, inspired by the circular economy concept. Since 2005 the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ product standard has been adopted in western markets as being the benchmark and most stringent product certification, fitting the incentives of the circular economy.
Through the certification process the C2C product standard steers designers and manufacturers through a continuous environmental and social improvement process in which the product is assessed in five categories; material health, material recycling, renewable energy and carbon management, water management and social responsibility.
Essentially, sustainable building materials produced in the biosphere (bio-cycle of the circular economy) have three huge ‘green’ benefits over techno-cycle materials:
They are renewable (if managed well they provide an unlimited source of resource).
They have a very low, possibly even negative carbon footprint.
If designed well (bio-cycle compliant additives, coatings & adhesives), they are biodegradable, returning back into the bio-cycle becoming nutrients for new plants/trees.
Based on this three criterion, wood sustainability has huge benefits over other materials.
SEAWEED FOR THATCHED ROOFING: GREENER CONSTRUCTION…
Using seaweed to thatch the roof of a house! An ancient tradition used by Vikings on the Danish island of Læsø, has been updated by the Copenhagen School of Business and Design. Architectural technology student, Kathryn Larsen believes the technique could be adopted more widely as a modern and environmentally friendly option in construction projects. “I wanted to create a solution inspired by the old, but for a new and modern building industry”, she said.
“I found out later that they thatched the Læsø houses with dry seaweed, but I also found that hydrating it helped keep the shape as I thatched it, and it seemed to help the natural binders in the eelgrass itself to be released. The first test examples have been outside for around 10 months, the eelgrass is nearly solid from repeat exposure to rain”. It is becoming increasingly acceptable to use eelgrass as a material for insulation. Larsen sees her panels as a supplementary insulation option or being installed over existing surfaces of renovated buildings to reduce heat loss, as well as panels for roofs and façades.
We continue to see discussion and continued growth in biophilic design. It is fantastic that we can look forward to a future where designers everywhere are embracing elements of nature within their design work. We hope you enjoyed reading part 2?
If you enjoyed reading this informative blog:
Connect | Comment | Share:
Hello From Speak,
We relish the opportunity to home stage and create interior design’s that inspires. We love to maximise space, leverage colour, and blend architectural features with modern design.
Contact us to SPEAK about your home staging or interior design project’s. We would love to hear from you and explore the rich possibilities!