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conscious living: talking brown

After being gone for almost a week (two days for work in Bacolod and four days for vacation in Camiguin), I’m now like a crazy person trying to catch up on work. I don’t even know where to start! It’s that stressful day after a fun vacation…

While I finish my scheduled posts for the week, let me share with you this lecture from our friend and former professor Arch. Nicolo del Castillo on how green design is closely related to culture and climate. This is probably his Cliff’s Notes version of the “Designing with Nature” course under the masters program of UP College of Architecture. Hope this will serve as an eye-opener to all of you. df

zombie safe house = sustainable house

The 2011 Zombie Safe House Competition is an annual design competition to create the best safe house in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Imagine the world being run over by zombies, what’s the safest place for you?

The organizers believed that artists, designers and architects have the solution and will save mankind!

From over 200 entries, the designers have ingeniously incorporated sustainable design principles in their safe houses. From self-sustaining food production and water storage…

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… to utilizing pre-fabricated materials (container vans)…

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… to self-generating power (zombies in a giant hamster wheel), …

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… and even adaptive re-use of existing structures…

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… while staying perfectly safe and stylish.

Head on over to their website and vote for the best! Voting ends on October 31. – green guide

conscious living: from rags to rugs

I stumbled upon these fabric shag rugs from Urban Outfitters over the weekend. Made from multicolored strips of cotton and polyester, these rugs look pretty fancy, but, mind you, they’re not so difficult to make. Additionally, the design allows you to use scrap fabrics and even old cotton shirts as alternative raw materials. That’s very environmentally friendly!

Above is a “spaghetti shag rug” from Thailand made from unused, reclaimed t-shirt manufacturing remnants. The fabrics were cut into thin strips and hand-hooked into a shag rug.

The same technique was used by Elle of Xoelle when she made this plush gray rug. Because she also used old cotton t-shirts, the rug is soft, comfy and safe for her little one to play on. Her blog post here offers a step-by-step guide  on how to make this project.

Instead of latch hooking the strips of fabric, Stefanie of A Common Thread hand-knitted the fabric strips into a fine-looking bath rug. You can find her tutorial here.

If an area rug is just too big of a project for you to handle, you can start small by making a pillow case/cushion cover. V and Co has a tutorial on how to make one. This, however, requires you to stitch the pieces on a fabric backing using a sewing machine.

Great recycling projects, right?! Your old shirts and bed sheets can now have a better, brighter second life!

10a alabama st.: resurrection furniture

Our rainy Saturday last weekend was spent visiting two new creative spots in Manila.

We first headed to New Manila in Quezon City to check out 10A Alabama St., an old bungalow which is now home to three creative spaces: the showroom of Resurrection Furniture & Found Objects Gallery, the art gallery of RAW, and the tea bar of Hausbesetzer Laboratory.

Resurrection Furniture

Architect Leah Sanchez and interior designer Binggoy de Ocampo, both from UP Diliman, are the creative minds behind eco-friendly Resurrection Furniture. True to their store’s name, the two designers give a new life to “dead” objects—old and damaged furniture, salvaged wood, and “junk” of all sorts—by refurbishing them back to life or upcycling them into new functional pieces. I admire them for seeing the beauty in the things that many would consider ugly or garbage.

We love the wood dining chairs, the console table made from unfinished salvaged wood, the white armchairs, and the card catalog. Oh, I want the card catalogue!

Aside from furniture, lighting and small decorative objects, the shop also has a collection of small sculptural pieces by artist Ling Quisumbing. The pieces are mostly an assemblage of found objects such as used pencils and scrap wood.

Even their price tags and calling cards are upcycled. They are made from old library catalog cards. Their calling card even has a note encouraging the person to find another use for it, maybe as a bookmark or even as a greeting card.

To know more about Resurrection Furniture, visit their website here and their facebook page here.

Tomorrow, we’ll be sharing the rest of  10A Alabama St. with Robert Alejandro’s RAW art gallery and Jetro Rafael’s Hausbesetzer Laboratory.

beyond earth hour: make do and mend

Last Saturday, many cities around the world joined Earth Hour and turned off their lights for an hour to show their commitment to sustainable living. After that, what?

Turning off the lights for Earth Hour is representative of the small deeds and actions, when observed by everyone, will contribute in making the earth a better place to live in (sorry for the beauty pageant cliche). After Earth Hour, what else can we do?

Make do and mend!

During World War II, Make Do and Mend was the slogan of the people to promote a more frugal lifestyle because their supplies and financial resources were limited. Now, we may have the money to buy all sorts of material things but our natural resources, especially energy from fossil fuels, remain limited. Plus, land pollution, because of solid wastes, remain to be one of the leading global environmental issues.

So, say goodbye to wasteful living by being a mindful shopper/consumer and by using your stuff (not just clothes) until they ‘die’. Learn how to repair, re-purpose, and recycle to cut down the amount of solid wastes that go into landfills. Hope these pretty vintage posters will inspire and remind you to make the most of what you have.

*images via farouche, clare owen, and this is temporary

bamboo car from cobonpue

We were told about this Kenneth Cobonpue car during the CebuNext show. Cool right?!

” ‘Phoenix’—the name Cobonpue has given his automobile design—has a form made of rattan, bamboo, steel and carbon fiber. It projects this era’s thrust towards artisanship and craftsmanship, biodegradability and environment-friendliness, as opposed to assembly-line production and high technology—the contrast between man’s handiwork and machine. By coincidence, the car is unveiled at a time when the world is facing the horrors of potential nuclear calamity, the fallout from a technology reduced at the mercy of nature.” Source

Read the rest of the article here.

*Photo courtesy of Kenneth Cobonpue

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conscious living: use less plastic!

Sorry for the relative silence here.  All three of us suddenly have an overwhelming amount of work! I don’t know why. But based on experience, I blame it on the nearing holiday season. Projects, events, and deadlines start to pile up beginning in  October because everyone wants to finish everything before Christmas.

So, it’s not that we already ran out of interesting ideas and projects to share. In fact, we already have several posts lined up! We just need to find the time to work on them. Here are some posts to watch out for:

• Lilli and Ana’s trip to Calauan, Laguna to join Habitat for Humanity’s Blogger’s Build
• Ardel and Lilli’s trip to La Union to tour Thunderbird Resort, Poro Point and to attend the launch of Point Residences
• New spacelift projects c/o our df readers Ina and Weng
• An update on UP ID’s Upgrade Project
• Heima’s new furniture collection
• New space matters feature on a compact condominium studio

For now, here’s a cute video from takepart on using less plastic. Hope this will entertain and inspire you to use less and less plastic everyday. (thanks orange for the tip!) df

best-of series: a year of conscious living

Has it really been a year?

We started off Conscious Living by encouraging everyone to change our perspectives. Green living requires a fundamental shift in thinking and living, and resulting in reducing our consumption patterns.

Then, we showed how green spaces are really cool spaces built for the right climate. By using passive cooling techniques, we reduce the energy consumed to cool the space mechanically. Some techniques we illustrated were locating the proper orientation, maximization of openings , employing cross ventilation, taking into account the stack effect, installing sunshades at windows, and elevating the structure, venting the roof and having good insulation.

We also presented measurement systems that could assist us in evaluating how green our choices were. These were the carbon footprint and embodied energy. These two measured the byproducts and energy consumed of the lifecycle of materials and goods.

Moreover, we shared some water-saving tips for your home.

We capped off the year by summing up all our tips into one cool video for your viewing (and learning) pleasure.

Here’s to another year of green living! -green guide

conscious living: 5 ways for a greener home

Last month, we joined an online contest and submitted a video entry on 5 easy ways for a greener home. We didn’t win the contest but we hope that the people who saw the video learned something.

Because we were limited to Animoto’s free 30-second video format, we didn’t get to add text descriptions to the photo mosaics in the presentation. Below is a brief explanation of how these 5 simple tips could help you get big results in creating a greener (and healthier!) home for your family.

Given our hot and humid climate, it is not surprising that a big percentage of our energy consumption (50-60%) goes to space cooling through electric fans and air conditioning systems. Instead of relying on these appliances, how about tapping on mother nature to help cool our homes? There are several ways on how to naturally cool your interiors. Green Guide’s 6-part article about passive cooling provides the basic information on proper orientation, openings, cross ventilation, stack effect, shading and insulation. Using the right kind of windows, like louver and casement windows, also helps a lot. Apart from saving money and improving the air quality of your interiors, you also help reduce CO2 in the air by decreasing your use of electricity.

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Why turn on that light bulb when there’s enough sunlight outside to illuminate the interiors? Natural daylighting, by having a lot of window openings and using light colors for the walls and ceilings to reflect the light, is free and CO2-free. Moreover, sunlight helps prevent the formation of harmful molds and mildew in your interiors. And, according to research, it is also beneficial to our overall health.

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Instead of buying useless accessories and senseless displays to decorate your home, why not bring in your favorite indoor plants to add color and texture to your space? Plants in interior spaces do more than just beautify your surroundings. Certain types of plants, like the spider plant, are proven to be excellent air purifiers that absorb harmful chemicals, like formaldehyde, that are commonly present in indoor environments. See the list of other plants HERE.

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This is synonymous to the environmentalists’ call to buy local. Local products use less fuel and energy to travel from the source to the consumer. This means less carbon emissions. Aside from being green, buying local also contributes to the growth of the local economy. That’s hitting two birds with one stone!

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As much as possible, buy handmade! Handmade products are usually one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted items that are made without the use of machines and are not mass produced.

Start putting your hands to work and learn how to make things yourself. Brush up on your sewing skills and make your own throw pillows (check out these easy and pretty felt throw pillows HERE). Even better if you can learn/re-learn how to knit and crochet and make pillows, blankets, and table cloths from yarn! Maybe these charming crochet projects HERE can inspire you to get started.

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space matters: mau’s eco-elegant design

“Design to inspire” is the prevailing theme of Maureen Grace De Jesus’s winning entry for MADE 2010, Interior Design category. Entitled “Eco-elegant Sustainable Future”, Mau tapped on the recent Ondoy catastrophe to create an interior space that could motivate people to rethink their lifestyle towards becoming more environment-friendly.

One thing noticeable is the recurring use of trees as the inspiration for her design elements. “One reason why we suffer from the adverse effects of global warming is the continuous depletion of our rainforests. My design intends to inspire people to take action against global warming by protecting our trees and our forests,” Mau explains.

The caption “Only God can make a tree” from a poem by Joyce Kilmer and the painted silhouette of a tree by the living area are two strong images that one would see upon entering the space. Apart from tree-related symbols, Mau also integrated the use of recycled wood in her design as a greener alternative. The wall behind the statement is clad in old wood that were salvaged from a junk shop. The tracery panels partially covering the lighting fixtures at the ceiling are discarded old callado panels from Mau’s home. To decorate the interiors, Mau made paintings that feature trees as the subject. Bringing everything together is the use of the color green for the walls to further emphasize the idea.

Apart from taking home the grand prize, Mau says that she also learned more about environmental design through her participation in the contest. “MADE gave me an opportunity to reflect on the issue and translate it into an elegant and comfortable interior space,” Mau shares. This resulting space is her expression of how it is to design and live with nature. {Thanks Mau!}

*photos courtesy of Federal Land

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