There is a certain etheral winding line that often surfaces in artist Andy Goldsworthy‘s work – If you’ve ever seen the documentary “Rivers and Tides,” visited the de Young Museum in San Francisco, or watched a snake move through the grass, you know the line. Last year this familiar form surfaced again in San Francisco as Goldsworthy created “Wood Line” – a winding trail of fallen Eucalyptus trees that gracefully curves through the forests of the Presidio.

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Post tags: Andy Goldsworthy, Andy Goldsworthy installation, Art, eco-art, environmental art, forest, green art, green design, Life, Presidio, Presidio Park Trust, sculpture, site-specific art, sustainable design, Wood, Wood Line, woods

Read the rest of Edge Condition Scrap Wood Pavilion Is A Dizzying Jenga-Like Sculpture

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", 10up competition, eco design, edge condition pavilion, green architecture, Green Building, green design, Jenga, Recycled Materials, recycled wood, scrap wood, Sustainable Building, sustainable design, synecdoche, temporary pavilion, Wood, wood pavilion

Freedom of Creation (FOC) recently announced a new 3-D printing technique that transforms sawdust into objects that look and feel (almost) like wood. It’s a bit less bizarre than printing human veins, or the artist who turns human ashes into objects, and since the materials to can be collected from dusty workshops, these objects have a pretty good sustainability factor. And they look snazzy too!

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Post tags: "sustainable development", 3d printing technology, Brian Garett, dutch, FREEDOM OF CREATION, mahogany, MDF, sawdust, soft wood, teak, Wood

Fresh from the scene of Stockholm Design Week, these colorful hexagonal wall tiles by Form Us With Love strike a brilliant balance between sustainable materials, economy and functionality. The modular tiles are available in a variety of different colors and can be assembled in various patterns to create a gorgeous mural on your wall. The tiles are made from wood fibers mixed with cement and water, and they have sound-absorbing properties that can actually improve the acoustics of a room.

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Post tags: "insulation materials", excelsior, form us with love, green design, green interiors, green materials, green products, hexagonal wall tiles, Products, sustainable design, Sweden, thermal and acoustic insolation, Wood, wood slivers, wood wool

During last week’s London Design Festival, Hendzel & Hunt presented their latest project dubbed Made in Peckham. Made from discarded waste material collected in and around their own neighborhood in South London, the design duo created an amazing collection of bespoke cabinets and other pieces of furniture, which are as emotionally compelling as they are honest and beautiful.

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Post tags: "Hendzel & Hunt", "Hinckley Table", craftsmanship, discarded, gowels, Gowlett, Locally-sourced, London Design Week, ReDesign, reused material, up-cycle, up-cycled, Wood

Read the rest of HEL YES! Woodsy Exhibition Shows the Roots of Finnish Design

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Post tags: Alvar Aalto, Finnish Deisgn, HClondon2010, Helsinki 2012, London Deisgn Festival 2010, natural resources, Wood

Trees, like animals, get tagged with radio chips: the chips help timber companies keep track of their product and fight illegal logging. Unfortunately, metal RFID chips damage the goods — a problem the European research institute Fraunhofer has solved with a wood radio chip. The chip contains a tiny metal antenna that emits its signal; however the amount of metal is so small that it has a negligible effect on the lumber’s quality. The rest of the radio-frequency identification tag is made of lignin, which is derived from the cell walls of plants.

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Post tags: deforestation, forestry, forests, Fraunhofer Institute, illegal logging, lignin, Logging, RFID tags, Wood, wood RFID tags

In 1960, architect Daniel Liebermann — who apprenticed under Frank Lloyd Wright — built a house on a hilly site in a new way, designing a structure that curved along a Marin County ridge and was embedded partially in it. The house’s West-facing wall of windows allowed it to melt into its surroundings, and it was fittingly made of rustic materials: salvaged brick, exposed radial beams of Douglas fir reclaimed from a bridge in Ukiah, and skylights obtained from WWII bombers. After 50 years, those rustic materials needed a face lift, and the house’s new owners brought in and SmithBuilt builders and Dwyer Design to modernize it without detracting from Libermann’s vision. We got a chance to check out the renovation during this year’s Marin Living:Home tours hosted by AIA SF – read on for a first look!

Read the rest of Update to Daniel Liebermann’s Radius House Preserves Organic Vision

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", daniel liebermann, Daylighting, Dwyer Design, frank lloyd wright, Green Building, green design, green lighting, insulation, Liebermann, Metal, radius house, salvaged brick, salvaged wood, SmithBuilt, sustainable design, ventilation, windows, Wood

Doctors and scientists have long been using metals to replace broken bones, but new research from scientists in Italy shows that wood can be transformed into a more effective material that is very similar to human bone. Wood was chosen as a starting point because it already closely resembles the structure of bone, and after 10 days under pressure and heat in a furnace, it becomes a chalky porous material with bone-like properties. This could be a huge leap forward for people suffering from bone loss or traumatic injuries, and what’s even better, it all comes from a natural material – wood!

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Post tags: bone, bone substitute, Design for Health, natural, Wood

The building you see above may look like a gigantic piece of shredded wheat, but it’s actually a (very) non-traditional tennis complex for Vaxjo, Sweden! David Tajchman, a Paris-based firm, designed the aptly named Tennicalator to be made out of locally sourced wood as part of an international design competition, but the woven facade isn’t the only cool thing about it. Since the area and neighboring buildings have a strong connection with the surrounding nature, David Tajchman  decided to take the Tenniscalator vertical instead of horizontal, leaving the remaining land for beautiful gardens and manicured grounds.

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Post tags: david tajchman, Daylighting, local, local materials, locally sourced materials, tennis, tennis center, tennis courts, tennis pavilion, tenniscalator, Wood, wooden structure

From the world’s largest hydrogen bus fleet to a six-acre multi-use Olympic Oval, British Columbia appears determined to host the “greenest games ever” in Vancouver come February. The city has constructed a series of stunning sustainably-built structures in preparation for upcoming events, and has also kicked off its naturally:wood website, which offers a free digital tool kit for Building Green with Wood and insight into how BC’s sustainable forestry helps LEED the way for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Read on for just a few of the Olympic buildings boasting impressive LEED certification standards.

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", 2010, beetle, games, green, Green Building, green design, greenest olympics, leed certified, mountain, pine, sustainable design, vancouver 2010 olympics, winter olympics, Wood

Home renovations and upgrades typically involve painting the house, re-tiling the bathroom floor or converting the garage into a room for Grandma. But when presented with the opportunity to re-vamp an existing house in Casablanca, Chile, architects Jose Ulloa Davet and Delphine Ding didn’t shy away from taking the route of Extreme Home Makeover. As striking as the views that surround it, the two architects were able to transform a lackluster 90’s beach house into a gorgeous, angular construction overlooking the South Pacific.

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Post tags: Architecture, Chile, eco friendly renovation, Green renovation, passive design, Sustainable Building, Wood, wood home, wood house, wood renovation

This re-covered iPod is almost like hugging a tree, except it fits in the palm of your hand. So perhaps it’s more like giving a tree a handshake and hearing your favorite tunes at the same time. Josh D, from Australia, took his Apple iPod Mini apart and built a brand new case from red cedar to update the otherwise outdated gadget into a stylish, natural, and woodsy example of heirloom design.

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Post tags: Dremel, heirloom design, ipod, iPod Mini, sustainable design, Wood, wood cover

Most of our modern-day gadgets are swathed in plastic or other high-tech materials, and why wouldn’t they be? Plastic is both cheap and easy to produce. But English Russia‘s display of wooden gadgets shows that sometimes the most elegant items are the simplest.

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Post tags: antique, cell phone, cell phones, clocks, gadgets, Greener Gadgets, russian english, Wood, wood-covered gadgets

Winter shelter in the Arctic can take form in an upside down hunting boat – a traditional Inuit practice. Covey Island Boatworks, award winning builders of hand-crafted yachts, power and sailboats, has brought that idea into dry dock developing a prototype wood and epoxy prefab that applies boatbuilding principles directly to an extreme Arctic home.


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Post tags: Arctic, boatbuilding, Brock Junkin, Covey Island Boatworks, epoxy, houseboat, Inuit, Nova Scotia, Petite Riviere, Rankin Inlet, shipwrights, traditional building, Wood