I just tried to find out more about Project UDesign, a competition sponsored by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Cargill, Toray Industries and Century Furniture. The goal is to produce a chair that is both “sustainable and sellable.” It is targeted to be the next “ eco friendly wing chair” on the …
In 1970, Toray Industries colleagues Dr. Toyohiko Hikota and Dr. Miyoshi Okamoto created the world’s first micro fiber as well as the process to combine those fibers with a polyurethane foam into a non-woven structure – which the company trademarked as Ultrasuede®. In April 2009, Toray announced “a new environmentally responsible line of products which …
I got a call awhile ago from Harmony Susalla, founder and chief designer for Harmony Art (if you haven’t seen her glorious fabrics go right now to http://www.harmonyart.com). She was wondering about optical brighteners, and I discovered I couldn’t tell her much except to say that some are derived from benzene, which is a chemical …
Here we are in the 21st century, with its acute global issues of over-population, loss of natural habitat, carbon emissions and pollution of all kinds — in a nutshell the specter of diminishing resources and climate change. What’s a good architect to do? Some are saying that fabric structures – that ancient way of providing …
Did anybody see the Goyard canvas shopping tote for sale over the holidays? It cost $1065, plus $310 if you wanted a triangular “recycle” symbol painted in gold. The canvas was advertised as being “100% recyclable”. Let’s not go into all the ramifications of that one product, but I want to use this example …
The new Children’s Environmental Health Center of the Mt. Sinai Department of Community Health and Preventitive Medicine (www.childenvironment.org) is looking into, as they say, a “whole host of diseases that come from toxic environments”, including: asthma, autism, allergies, ADD and ADHD, leukemias, brain cancer and birth defects. The chemicals they focus on in the YouTube …
OEcotextiles 