At this year's Wanted Design show during New York Design Week 12 contemporary designers unveiled 12 fresh new designs made entirely of lumber reclaimed from blighted New York City buildings! Dubbed 12 x 12, the exhibition features a chair made from a Park Avenue water tank, a desk made of wood salvaged from the Brooklyn Bridge, a coffee table made from Coney Island boardwalk planks, and a bar cart made of old wood casks from a distillery in Flushing. Read on to check out our photos and learn more about all 12 designs from this inspiring show!

 

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Spotted at New York Design Week, we are in love with the Urbio, a system of mix and match modular planters and organizers that snap into place with high-strength magnets. The series of various sized containers allow for the creation of a personalized wall garden, an elegant centerpiece, or a space-saving solution for organizing your home office.

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Bibliophiles are sure to get a kick out of BRC Designs‘ new “Spineless” chair, which is made up of the spines of hundreds of old books. Spotted at ICFF this past weekend, the literally literary seat has a color-blocked design that references Mondrian. The designer, Benjamin Rollins Caldwell, explained that he obtained many of the books for free at thrift shops and selected the spines that had the most titillating titles.

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Now in its second year running, Wanted Design is an international exhibition of some of the best and brightest minds in design - and this year's show during New York Design Week didn't disappoint with its remarkable array of green furniture, beautiful lighting solutions, and cleverly conceived products. We were thrilled to see some of our favorite green designers unveil new projects - like UM Project's robot lights and David Trubridge's aluminum coral lamps - and we were wowed by several fresh new designs like a living grass table, a series of recycled taxi cab lamps, and a gigantic chair made entirely from LEGO bricks!

 

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When gardening, we’re sure many of you have used herbicides to kill weeds and other invasive plants. However, the thing about herbicides is that in order to kill weeds, they are often very toxic and affect everything from those using them to potentially the groundwater. To prevent any possible environmental damage with herbicides in the future, a team from the Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany have developed a hi-tech alternative: weed-killing lasers!

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For some designers it may be a challenge to be noticed among the vast number of inspiring designs shown across the city during NY Design Week, but with a larger-than-life chair constructed from Lego, Alessandro Jordão's work was hard to miss. Jordão's installation was part of a group show called Fresh from Brasil, which featured selected works from talented Brazilian designers. We love that this chair shows us yet another artistic interpretation using Lego blocks; this time infusing the grandiose scale of Pop-Art objects with the vibrant colors and spirit of Brazil.

 

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The sky-scraping 2,080 foot Tokyo Sky Tree recently opened in Japan on the site of a former freight shunting yard on the Sumida River. The lofty needle tops the communications building, which is now the world’s tallest tower. The tower was completed just a few months after its deadline, due to a shortage of resources caused by last year’s Fukushima Nuclear disaster.

 

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Haiko Cornelissen's lush, living PicNYC Table is a brilliant plant-growing furnishing that brings a taste of the outdoors to every meal. The aluminum table is deep enough to double as a planter bed, and it can grow everything from grass to herbs and flowers. We caught up with Haiko at this year's Wanted Design exhibition during NY Design Week to ask him about his inspiration and snap some firsthand photos - read on for a closer look!

 

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The LED-lit One Raffles Place Tower Two is a worthy successor to its taller neighbor, One Raffles Place Tower One, with a flair for environmentally advanced design. Located right in the heat of the bustling downtown of Singapore’s financial district, the tower’s 38 gleaming, LED-illuminated stories tell the tale of a new breed of buildings that are designed to do more with less. The building, which achieved the Green Mark Platinum Award, is the work of SAA and Paul Noritaka Tange, the son of the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kenzo Tange.

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Flip-flops are a summer staple that many of us will be spending the next three months in. But instead of purchasing some flimsy pair at the local mall this year, why not consider slipping your toes into an eco-friendly, vegan option instead? We’ve rounded up 10 eco-friendly flip-flops that use everything from raffia fiber to recyclable rubber to make for some stylish slip-ons. Check ‘em all out ahead!

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The colorful Santa Eugenia de Berga Social Housing project in Spain presented an interesting challenge to Barcelona-based design firm Bailo Rull ADD+: to design an efficient building despite the site's unfortunate solar orientation. Located between an existing building and open green space, the site for the project was along the north-south axis that had zero shade on the west. In order to keep the building from cooking in the afternoon sun, the firm's solution was to add a brise soleil handrail to filter the light and block the heat.

 

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Here at Inhabitat we have seen some very creative iPhone amplifiers that use bamboo canes, repurposed musical instruments and even an entire tree trunk to blast tunes. But here is one example you can easily DIY by combining a vintage bike horn and a standard plastic tube. Homemade, low-tech and definitely eye-catching, Lowtechatmo’s Bike Horn iPhone will combine your love of music with your love for bikes.

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With China becoming the world’s leader of solar cells and panels, it was hoped that their mass production would help bring down global prices. However, in order to aid domestic manufacturing, the US has hampered such progress by imposing tariffs of as much as 250 percent on Chinese-made solar cells. While the decision was made to protect US solar production against foreign competition, it is expected that it will ultimately raise PV cell prices and hurt the domestic renewable energy industry.

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