Stuart Haygarth is a lighting designer and innovative ‘recycler’ who makes lights out of unwanted and found materials - everything from party poppers to disposable wine glasses. His latest chandelier is a stunning 1.5m in diameter, and contains 3,000 pairs of eye glassses. It was exhibited as part of London Design Festival’s Trash Luxe exhibition, which sought to redefine ‘luxury” by finding beauty in unwanted materials. They reckon 200 million people around the world need glasses every year but can’t afford them. Yet most people who wear glasses have more than one pair. Donate your old glasses to charities, here.
Tag Archive for 'environmental_sustainability'
optical illusion
May, June, July, August. In four months time, the State Government will hear a review by a commission on its recommendations on the amalgamation of the State’s local councils. Of particular interest to you, may be that those shires you visit for their uniqueness will change under this proposal. Noosa shire for example, encompassing a very dear place to me, could subsequently merge with Caloundra and Maroochy councils, effectively forming a Sunshine Coast Super City. This could allow population and planning strategies currently being applied across the Sunshine Coast to be applied and become detrimental to Noosa’s lifestlye, environment, economy and surf breaks.
I feel a little under the weather today. I think I’ve been experiencing what some environmentalists such as John Seed and Joanna Macy term ‘despair’. It’s a lonely, cementing feeling of helplessness and inaction in response to the current ‘climate’ of local, national and international events. In search of an offer of knowledge-a slice of my soul, a question from the grey that matters to share with you, I opened up a book I’ve been reading called Massive Change. It proposes that a new breed of designer is needed, one who is in the words of R. Buckminster Fuller, a “synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist”. Continue reading ‘buckminster fuller.’
High Line in New York started out as a community-driven effort to preserve an abandoned 1940’s elevated rail line through Manhattan’s far West Side. It is now becoming an exciting project that will convert the rail line into a world class linear public space and park that is elevated up to 9m above the ground and be over 22 blocks long. The design explores ideas of community space, landscape, layers of history, environmental sustainability, and plays on the distinct experience of walking on this unusual elevated urban space. The first section of High Line is set to open in 2008. Continue reading ‘parks in the sky’
