sustainable style foundation*

I am so excited about my find this week! Finally I don’t have to feel guilty about all those wasted plastic lids and paper cups from my daily latte stop at my favorite socially and sustainably responsible coffee shop Gimme! Coffee. It’s a reuseable to-go “I’m Not A Paper Cup” cup that is so stylish, I’ve been showing it off to everyone. It’s porcelain with a silicone lid that can be washed and re-used. Keeps stuff hot or cold. I’ve already saved 4 cups and lids this week and am improving my eco-foot print daily. Find yours at the MoMa store on-line.

This unique flooring made from discarded belts is simply beautiful. It was a find at the ICFF show, from a co-worker of mine. The luxury leather flooring, is a new re-working of vintage leather belts and no two tiles are alike. It's a glossy and hardwearing surface available by the square meter. It can be used for flooring, table tops, walls and feature areas. Check out the UK company Ting's website for more fashion products that are made from found seatbelts and strapping.

All the designers were in New York this weekend at the Javitz Center for the ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair). The celebrating of design continued on through Tuesday with lots of showroom parties for the creative set too! As usual there were beautiful and inspirational pieces from all over the world at the show. Sustainability was a big provoker of new thoughts about product design. One piece really stood out and it was the OZ Lowchair by Cate&Nelson Design a Swedish and Spanish design team. I just loved it and kept dragging all my colleagues over to see the chair. It’s a chair that you would never need to reupholster, because you can just flip over a piece of the layered felt to change the color. Very clever and with a painted white metal base, it’s a chair that you would never tire of and would always be in style in any setting…a product that’s beyond re-use it’s all about convertibility.

This week I've been focusing on materials research as I've been working in my office to update our NBBJ NY Studio Resource Library with innovative and sustainable materials. One great resource is cradle to cradle materials - which is great! A few of the intriguing ones were: beautifully etched concrete, coated offset paper that's more sustainable, particleboard that's formaldehyde free, beautiful cork disk floor, acoustical wall fabric 100% wool, and drapery with natural fibers. Another great resource was developed by a former colleague of mine at NBBJ, Blaine Brownell. It's called Transmaterials. His second book, Transmaterial 2: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment, was just printed at the beginning of this year, and has a greater emphasis on materials with qualities that make them healthier than others. Have fun exploring...

Stopping in Barneys NY on a quest for some new candles I saw a beautiful display of Cire Trudon candles. It wasn’t just that the candles have been being made since 1643 in a shop on Saint-Honore, or that the 100% vegetable wax candles smelled beautiful, or that they had a candle called “Trianon” inspired by my favorite fashion guru, Marie Antoinette; it was the clever display. They had small cloches (bell-shaped glass domes) over each candle to preserve the fragrance. Apparently, just as they did in the original Paris boutique - tres chic! I loved the idea as much as the candles.

On my way to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum with weekend visitors, I found the cloches. What luck! They were in the old Tenement Museum gift shop that’s been repurposed into an Earnest Sewn shop on 90 Orchard. In the back of the store there’s a cool little florist shop called “Flower Girl” that’s run by Denise Porcano. She had several glass cloches protecting tiny gardens and arrangements – beautiful and perfect for a small apartment. I’m not houseplant kind of person, but love this fresh take on an old French starter garden tradition. Plus it’s a great way to connect with nature in a modern way. Now I am totally intrigued with this idea and am going to check out a Paula Hayes exhibit. She’s a Manhattan artist who’s taken this idea of the mini-garden further with her organic shaped cloches and modern terrariums.