Sustainable Projects and Ideas: Round Up

Below are a series of wonderful examples of the use of sustainable design in its many forms to get students juices flowing in terms of ideas to inspire them:

1) PET lamps weave textile traditions from plastic waste – RECYCLE

I love when projects utilising recycling are very creative and artistic as it can really show what can be done (even if some would agree that the circular economy is more important than ad-hoc recycling iniatives).

Pleats Please? Photo credit: Petit Pli

2) Origami Inspired Clothing – REUSE and EXTEND

This is truly ingenious using some inspiration from classic designer Issey Miyake and aeronatutical engineering to design clothing that simply grows with the user from baby to toddler and even beyond!

3) Get rid of those air conditioners  with plastic bottles – UPCYCLE and IMPROVE ENERGY CONSUMPTION

This is just fabulous and inegnious design – where the understanding of basic physical principles of the movement of air can lead to great improvement and sustainability without everyone int he world needing high energy consumption air conditioning. The challenge is how to roll this out so it becomes accessible knowledge and part of designs for housing and retrofitting of housing.

Still needing inspiration here are some other sites and articles:

• Making use of reclaimed materials – Zero Waste Land
• Chiangmai Bamboo Stadium – Natural fast growing Materials and no travel makes this very sustainable
• Another design looking at the lifecycle of the product from kids desk to adult seat in one simple switch