Photo: Paul Clemence.

A chair could change a century and perhaps a planet. It will have to, eventually, but the greening of the home-furnishings industry is taking longer than we hoped for. Though we see evidence of one or two singular aspects of sustainability, systems-thinking is harder to find when it comes to residential furniture design and manufacturing.

Asked for an honest assessment of the “State of Green and Sustainability” at New York trade show, ICFF, (International Contemporary Furniture Fair), we traipsed through three very-cool satellite showrooms, one high-end showroom, and the whole ICFF show floor (at the Javits Center) before we finally heard smart talk from a visionary manufacturer. Someone is doing their homework and we loved hearing words like “biocide release, change of custody in the supply chain and resource conservation.” But much more homework needs to be done throughout the industry. Herewith is our first Report Card and highlights of the green and sustainable trends from ICFF 2011 as well as galleries, shops, and showrooms around New York City. Read more…

Who can remember life before plastic? Could you imagine life after plastic? The National Building Museum organized a panel of experts as part of its popular series For the Greener Good: Conversations that Will Change the World titled “Life After Plastic.” This discussion examined the role of plastics as they are used today and how they will change in the future. The organic discussion, molded by questions from the audience and online participants via Twitter (#FGG), was moderated by Lance Hosey, president and CEO of GreenBlue. Other panelists included: Blaine Brownell, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture; Jay Bolus, vice president of technical operations at MBDC; and Robert Peoples, Ph.D., director of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute.

“There’s a great future in plastic.” This statement, from The Graduate in 1967, started off the intriguing conversation that examined the benefits and consequences of America’s (and the world’s) dependence on the inexpensive, durable material. The true reality is that only about 5% of plastics are recycled and practically every piece of plastic ever made still exists. Read more…

Lamps are generally not made to be touched, but taking the chance with Spanish lighting designer Arturo Alvarez’s Nevo lamp certainly pays off. The way it holds its vaguely floral shape suggests that it is made of a metal mesh, perhaps clogged with paint. But my hands encountered silicone, rendered almost skin-like and organic by the mild warmth of the bulb inside.

Alvarez’s eponymous lighting company has been working for two years to get this material right. Silicone by itself couldn’t offer enough sculptural possibilities. But using it to cover metal gives it rigidity. The covering isn’t uniform, so the light that passes through is diffused unevenly. The material seems to have captivated Alvarez. He has used it the roses of the Nevo collection, and as the stormy Planum ceiling lights. And the lamps he is developing for the Milan Furniture Fair this year will continue the love affair, albeit in more tightly structured surfaces. Read more…

On a recent visit to Chicago, I ducked into the light court at The Rookery on the corner of Adams and LaSalle. I do this every time I’m in this city on the lake, because I love the space. As do others, apparently. While office vacancy rates are high around the country, at The Rookery only a small percentage of the space is available; according to the building’s website only 5,367 square feet are looking for tenants in this 12 story late 19th Century building where one floor alone can contain some 20,000 square feet. Read more…

In keeping with President Obama’s “Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance” executive order, we’ve seen a decisive push for greener federal buildings over the past year. It even appears that different agencies are actually vying with each other for the most sustainable buildings—NASA seems absolutely thrilled that the new Propellants North Administrative and Maintenance Facility, at the Kennedy Space Center, will be its greenest facility ever.

The building will be “a future hub for spacecraft fueling support and a storage facility for cryogenic fuel transfer equipment,” so I was expecting suitably fancy, futuristic technology. Instead, the design and construction team is gunning for a LEED Platinum rating with some good old-fashioned methods—recycling and Dumpster diving. Read more…

In her monthly “Letter from Baltimore,” Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson writes about architecture, culture, and urbanism in a city more often associated with violent crime than with good design. Click here to read her previous posts. For more by Dickinson, visit her blog, Urban Palimpsest.

Yolande Daniels’s Tea Cozy. All photos: Will Kirk

New York has P.S. 1’s courtyard installation; Baltimore has Sculpture at Evergreen. Every two years, the 26 acres surrounding the historic Evergreen Museum & Library transforms into a lab for artists. This year, equal presence was given to installations by architects, including New York’s Matter Practice and Yolande Daniels, the founding design principal of studio SUMO.

Sculpture at Evergreen’s curators—the University of Maryland architecture professor Ronit Eisenbach and the artist and curator Jennie Fleming—directed the ten individuals and teams to develop work responding to the site, a Gilded Age house with Italianate gardens owned by Johns Hopkins University. For architects, this kind of impermanent installation can become an extension of the studio, offering an opportunity to play with materials and processes in a fast and temporary setting. “It allows them to experiment,” Eisenbach says, “and take what they learned back to their practice.” Read more…

Introducing this year’s MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program installation to a group of journalists yesterday, MoMA’s chief curator of architecture and design, Barry Bergdoll, likened it to a playground—but then quickly qualified that assessment. “Turns out it’s an extremely serious playground,” Bergdoll said, adding later that the installation is “about our contemporary condition and not just about fun.”

You could have fooled me. Read more…

We first wrote about the Helsinki-based design firm Company back in 2008, shortly after its founders, Johan Olin and Aamu Song, debuted their Top Secrets of Finland collection. The idea there was to commission traditional Finnish manufacturers to produce small runs of everyday products unique to the region. Now Company has expanded the line for the exhibition Secrets of Central Finland, on display at the Craft Museum of Finland until September 5. Check out more images of Olin and Song’s latest Finnish design finds after the jump. Read more…

At the tail end of this year’s London Festival of Architecture (LFA), which begins June 19, sculpture and architecture will come together in a rather unusual way.

NEO Bankside, a £400 million scheme of luxury apartments adjacent to London’s Tate Modern and designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, is due for its first-phase completion in 2011. To give LFA-goers a foretaste of the “premium residences,” the developers commissioned the sculptor Brendan Jamison to create architectural replicas of their project and its illustrious neighbor—in sugar cubes. 81,028 cubes, to be exact. Jamison painstakingly stuck each one in place, using more than fourteen liters of glue in the process.  The replica of the Tate Modern was built at a scale of 1:100, which means that its chimney still stands over a meter high, and it weighs close to 500 pounds.

Jamison is known for his rather unusual choice of materials: he regularly works with wax and wool. But his sugar-cube sculptures (he has previously created models of Belfast’s Helen’s Tower and a proposed construction at Great Patrick Street, Belfast) are something else. The two new ones will be on display at the NEO Bankside sales pavilion on the 3rd and 4th of July; we will post some additional, larger photos when the final installation is complete.

Each year as summer gives way to chill, the Jewish faithful erect sukkahs, or temporary outdoor structures in which to eat meals. At first glance, the rules dictating the sukkah seem arcane to the point of amusement: for example, the roof cannot be made of utensils or anything conventionally functional; the roof cannot be made of food; during the day, one must have more shade than sunshine; at night one must be able to see the stars through the roof; and the sukkah must be at least ten handbreadths tall. Oh, and a whale may be used to make the sukkah’s walls. Read more…