I MUST have this chair!
Mein Gott in Himmel! Three cheers for the creative use of discovered materials.
Builder and visionary Dan Phillips on a walkway crafted from
Osage Orange branches. Osage Orange is a wood species usually
notion of as useless scrub.
Yesterday's Home section of The New York Times featured a story about a different kind of home builder in Huntsville, Texas. Dan Phillips builds affordable housing from discarded and reused building materials and the results of his labors are as sensible as they are sustainable.
These are the bottoms of wine bottles made into
a stained glass panel in a Dutch door.
Since 1997, Phillips' construction company, The Phoenix Commotion , has built 14 homes in Huntsville. On the whole those 14 homes were built from the ground up and 80% of their materials were salvaged from construction sites, hauled out of trash heaps or simply found along the road.
These residence numbers are made from the bones of cattle
from a close-by slaughterhouse.
Homes constructed via The Phoenix Commotion are quirky and oddly stunning. There's a rhythm to the snap shots right here and patterns emerge from the seeming randomness of those discovered items. The man's a actual visionary and what he's building is the anti-tract home, the anti-poverty trap. What Phillips and Phoenix Commotion are doing too is capturing holes within the idea that "going green" way spending outstanding wads of green.
This is a cork floor made from grouted in wine corks.
Too often, what's marketed in the US as "green" is synonymous with expensive and "going green" is an opportunity to strike a sanctimonious pose. What gets lost in the sticky gobs of marketing speak is the idea of sustainability. Sustainability's all about the wise use of resources, and so many of "green" products spawned by consumerism have nothing to do with using resources wisely and everything to do with the pose. The projects from The Phoenix Commotion profiled in The Times yesterday are a brilliant example of an anti- "green" green and represent the spirit embodied in the word sustainability. Read the article , it's a great story.
This ceiling is made from discarded frame samples from a body save.
This is a roof crafted from mis-matched roofing shingles and
organized via shade into stripes.
This is an exterior wall made from discarded lumber. Beautiful!
And of direction, The Chair. It's crafted from chair components and farm animals bones.
The vertebrae finials job my memory of doves.
All pix with the aid of Michael Stravato for The New York Times.