Designer Donna Wilson mixes classic styling with quirky, colorful, hand-woven textiles to create fresh contempory pieces that are anything but old-fashioned. Her Eadie eco armchair replaces the use of petrochemicals with a combination of natural fibers such as horse hair and wool for the upholstering. Designed for SCP, the chair comes with a wide range of coverings to choose from, but we’re partial to the eye-catching pattern shown above, which is green in more ways than one.

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Post tags: Donna Wilson, Eadie armchair design, eco armchair, eco design, furniture design, green furniture design, green materials, London Design Festival, SCP, sustainable upholstering

Before you throw away that wobbly old stool, or that faded easy chair with Aunt Maggie’s favorite pattern on it, consider giving it a second chance at life with a good sanding, some new screws, and dazzling new fabric! We recently visited Chicago Home + Garden‘s inspiring annual event, Chairs for Charity, where 15 top designers transformed the old into something breathtakingly new.

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Post tags: better homes and garden, chairs for charity, furniture design, green charity events, Green Design Events, Reclaimed Materials, recycled furniture, reusing, vintage chairs

Minale-Maeda has created a brilliant set of “downloadable furniture” designs that can be made to order in a range of sizes and materials, cutting down on the need for stores to transport and keep stock of bulky furnishings. Each item from the Inside Out collection can also be constructed on-location, since users can download the blueprint as a DIY project.

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Post tags: DIY furniture, furniture design, inside out furniture, minale maeda, transforming furniture design, wooden downloadable furniture

Read the rest of Transforming Crates Unfold to Reveal Incredible Furniture Sets and Foosball Table

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Post tags: "green furniture", crates, furniture design, industrial crate furniture, minimalist furniture, modern design, naihan li, Transforming Furniture

Specializing in unique pieces of furniture made from reclaimed teak wood, Boards and Beans keep sustainability at the heart of their workshop. Their range of furniture keeps a focus on what customers need, and they offer solid and useful pieces in a variety of sturdy, yet beautiful designs.

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Post tags: "green furniture", "sustainable furniture", board and beans, eco furniture, furniture design, green furniture design, new jersey furniture, reclaimed teak wood, Recycled Materials

This fantastic piano key chair struck a chord for sustainable design last weekend at the opening of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. Created by BRC Designs, the armchair gives tired and out-of-tune pianos a whole new purpose. The surface of the Korobeiniki chair is constructed entirely from the instruments – from the internal wooden frame to the seat itself. The chair’s dynamic, textured exterior features an assortment of layered keys, giving the classic instrument a modern twist.

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Post tags: BRC Designs, furniture design, ICFF, korobeiniki chair, piano key chair, recycled furniture design, recycled piano chairs, repurposed pianos, secondhand pianos

Dirk Van Der Kooij’s Endless chair is a marvel that uses just one plastic string bent back and forth to form its innovative structure. The best part? The chair is made entirely from recycled refrigerators! Committed to environmentally-friendly design, Van Der Kooij chose to give new life to old fridges, saving them from scrap yards and landfills. Recycling the refrigerators also gives a little personality to the chairs (each one is a different color) yielding a unique chair for each color combination.

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Post tags: Dirk van der Kooij, Eindhoven, Endless Chair, furniture design, Recycled Materials, Recycled refrigerators, upcycling

Brizilian designer Brunno Jahara recently finished his beautifully crafted line of vibrant furniture he’s calling “Neorustica.” A multi-faceted collection with compelling lines, Neorustica includes tables, benches and containers, with pieces varying in shades from antique white and brown, to a fuller spectrum of weathered hues reminiscent of a rainbow. Recalling the worn aesthetic of the shanty towns that dot Rio de Janeiro (also know as favelas), the natural texture of salvaged wood paired with the local color scheme embodies the unique spirit of Jahara’s homeland in which he sincerely pays homage.


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Post tags: "green furniture", "sustainable furniture", brazil furniture, brazilian furniture design, Brunno Jahara, eco furniture design, furniture design, furniture made from recycled materials, green furniture design, Jahara studios, Neorustica, Recycled wood furniture, salvaged wood, salvaged wood furniture

Zombie chair! Out for your wood scraps! Oozing sawdust and pure carnage! Designer Hongtao Zhou, who we found  playing with ice, decided to get Holiday on a broken, abandoned chair he found on the streets in Madison, Wisconsin. The result: chair of the undead, risen from the swamp and demanding the chance to sit in your living room looking creepy. Zhou created the drippy effect with wood scraps and sawdust (and probably some monster blood and glue). Expect this chair on your front porch Halloween night, demanding all the sweet linseed oil you can muster. Happy creepy chair night, everyone, happy monster night.

+ Hongtao Zhou

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Post tags: "green furniture", environmental art, furniture design, halloween, Hongtau Zhou

Through the end of August, the Museum of Arts and Design is hosting a weekly evening of good drinks, food and art on Thursdays starting at 5:00 PM. Big fans of pay-as-you-wish admission to museums, the Inhabitat team went on the first night. As we wandered around the museum, we were easily enamored with the objects on display. And then we wondered — in an eco-world, are these objects responsible? What about functionality? Is creating something just for the sake of looking at it, a waste of resources? So this week, we’ve been scouring for designers who have a knack for creating objects that inspire us with great curiosity, but are created with eco-responsibility.

Designboom has us wondering how many components you can subtract from a chair and still make it structurally sound with Timothy Lile’s Less Chair.

Designsponge inspired us with the simple rustic look of these lamps by Zeke Leonard.

Atelier29 talks about a tree trunk bench that proves any tree trunk can become seating — in fact, Jurgen Bey only sells the chair backs, ready to be installed into any tree trunk.

Design Milk features the Barnacle Chair, a comfy chair perfect for small spaces, made of reclaimed industrial felt and sustainably-harvested ash.

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Post tags: "lighting design", Decorative Objects, furniture design, museum of art and design, Recycled Materials

The Elephant Chair, by Barcelona-based Medio Design, is a wonderful example of both efficient crafting and clean, classic lines. Modeled from Ray and Charles Eames’ Lounge Chair Wood, the Elephant Chair is assembled from laser-cut wood and then fit together like a puzzle.

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Post tags: classic wood chair, eames lounge chair, efficient furniture design, furniture design, product design

Friday marked the opening day of CABOOM4, and we love the new location at the Baker Hanger in Santa Monica, CA. While the day was only open to the professions of the trade, the evening reception that was open to all, proved to be even more entertaining than previous years. We were able to stop by and check out some long-time Inhabitat favorites in the PreFab zone such as CleverHomes, Marmol Radziner, and LivingHomes. After wrapping-up the PreFab Zone a few newbies caught our eye in the first timers section. We’ll be reporting back on all the best new eco-friendly designers from CABOOM4 in the next few days, so stay tuned! In the interim, here our reports so far:


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Post tags: California Design Show, furniture design, Prefab