A Home for My Shelter
Designed as a tool for a particular group of homeless people who collect bottles from the streets so they can maintain a small income from the recycling plants in order to sustain themselves, designers Gregor Timlin and Barry Sheehan saw the Shelter Cart not as a solution to the social problem of the homeless but as a method of raising awareness about the issue.
Link: Shelter Cart
Rape Me, Murder Me, But Damn My Jeans Look Good!
“You know that period at the end of the night, when that girl you’ve been eyeing at the end of the bar, gets up and stumbles to the door to leave, without saying goodbye to you, even though you made eye contact with her like twice, and she just heads out, and you have no choice but to follow her, and rape her and then leave her on the side of the road, bloodied, or in a river, if you accidentally killed her, while you were forcing your 300 pounds of man on top of her.
Wrangler knows that period. And they’ve made the perfect jeans for it.
Good job Wrangler for attempting to make dead women seem fashionable.” ~Daniel Saynt
..::Sigh::..Yet another case for Jean Kilbourne.
Link: fashion indie
A Kickass ‘Puddle-Stomper’
By simply making a hole in a rubber boot, designer Saskia Marcotti has created an original, kickass bag.
But ‘puddle-stompers’ have recently made a more tender place in Gilding’s heart. Ok, hard to believe, bitchy as she is, but it’s the truth. Blame it all on that little ray of sunshine that was Marisa — rather, make that is, because next to rainbows and puffy clouds, one big flaming ray of sunshine is about all the containment God could put her in.
In February, Marisa died in a car accident. The loss to all who love her is tremendous, and Gilding can’t think of one funeral she has been to that has ever reached the magnitude that Marisa’s did. Family and friends poured in and out of Marisa’s mausoleum like the ebb and flow of gently crashing waves on the shore.
In harkening sorrow, family and friends listened to the silence to find the whispers of some solace to fill the empty space Marisa’s passing left in their heart. What they found was that a space had never been left empty, but filled with more expression and Joy, as was her namesake — Marisa Joy.
Of this sea of joy, sorrowful mourners became artists and philanthropists, and Marisa’s beloved ‘puddle-stompers’ their vehicle.
Project Joy Boots is a not-for-profit organization run by Marisa’s family to raise money, currently for a scholarship to be established in Marisa’s name at her alma mater, Gulf Coast Community College, for future Technical Theater Majors. Rainboots are decorated by family, friends, artists, and just plain cooky people and sold and/or auctioned as pieces of art. Should you want to wear them, then by all means, do so. Afterall, for Marisa, the more outlandish, the more decorated, and heaven knows, if it didn’t by all common sense match a damn thing, then it was the perfect pair of ‘puddle-stompers’.
Visit Project Joy Boots Facebook page for information on how to purchase or even donate your own pair of ‘Joy Boots’. There is also information on how to donate directly to the bank account established for Project Joy Boots raised funds.
Swiss Family Robinson, Eat Your Heart Out
Tree Houses are awesome, in fact, they are the ultimate childrens ‘toy’. Gracing every child’s christmas list — including the grown ones — and every once in a while you will come across some significant other’s Christmas list posted to the fridge door in even the most elegant of aged handwriting asking Santa for that ever dreamed of tree house. If you think you’re too old for Santa Claus and Christmas Wish Lists, get over yourself. You’re a drag and you friends and loved ones are doing you a diservices by not telling you so.
But Gilding always dreamt of going that one step further, having a tree house literally inside of a tree. Ok, so Gilding is far too hoity-toity to be happy with that mere amount of space as would be afforded from a bored out tree so obviously the conventional tree house need be built as well — hey, Gilding’s fantasy therefore she can be as bitchy as she wants to be. (Ha! Like any of that has ever stopped her before.) But how fucking cool would it be to have to ascend into a tree house from a winding staircase inside of a tree.
Swiss Family Robinson, eat your heart out. Living in a tree house was your last resort, you silly shipwrecked harbingers of Christian-oriented moral lessons of frugality, husbandry, resignation, and cooperation. Eco-architect Mitchell Joachim has created a ‘tree house’ meant to save the earth one ficus molded frame structure at a time.
Designed to be a living treehouse in which the dwelling itself merges with its environment and nourishes its inhabitants, the Fab Tree Hab dissolves conventional concept of home and establishes a new symbiosis between house and its surrounding ecosystem.
“In order to build the arboreal frame, the designers utilize “pleaching” – a gardening technique in which tree branches are woven together to form living archways. Trees such as Elm, Live Oak, and Dogwood bear the heavier loads, while vines, branches, and plants form a lattice for the walls and roof of the house. The interior structure is made of cob (clay and straw), a tried-and-true green building approach that lends itself to customized shaping of walls and ceilings.”
The trees that form the frame and the plants that grow on the external walls are meant to provide sustenance for the inhabitants as well as other living creatures that interact with the structure. This living estate will be biologically pure and contain no unknown substances, as the structure will utilize all natural building materials. As the designers point out, even those building materials that tout sustainability are nevertheless industrially manufactured and contain components that are not fully understood in terms of their long-term impact.
Link: Inhabitat | Fab Tree Hab
Misiak Green Sets…er, Tea Sets
Inspired by Britain’s love of tea, product designer Christine Misiak mixes elements of the contemporary with bright, poppy colors and elements of craft with industrially manufactured products. The outcome is a design of old and new.
Misiak rejuvinates old neglected tea sets by recycling, restyling, and resurfacing them, transforming them into elegant ‘green sets’ that celebrate the tradition of past and that of the present.
The “homeless” tea sets are rescued from their days of going to waste in dust gathering charity shops, flea markets, and car boot sales and transformed into Misiak’s product lines, “New/Old Tea Sets” and “Old/New Tea Sets”, as whole sets are customized with vibrant or contemporary colors, creating a shocking contrast of new and old. And no era of tea set is left unrescued if found, from antique, to mod, to modern contemporary, each set is customized by Misiak to reflect this blending of old and new.
Coral Me Crocheted
Launched by Australian sisters, and co-founding directors of the Los Angeles-based Institute for Figuring, Christine and Margaret Wertheim, the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, an exhibition composed of a series of coral reefs meticulously fashioned, largely out of yarn, is intended to call attention to the plight of one of the worlds most amazing ecosystems — in particular, the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland, Australia.
For millenia, the coral reefs have been mimicking a type of geomotry, called non-Euclidean hyperbolic space, which humans have only come to conceptualize at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Consider this: two straight lines indefinitely extended in a two-dimensional plane that are both perpendicular to a third line. Stay with Gilding, now. If her math-challenged self could get this, then so can you. So, two lines go into eternity and both run side by side to a third line that runs, lets say, betwenn the two of them. 
In Euclidean geomotry, the lines remain at a constant distance from one another, and are thus known as parallels. In hyberbolic geomotry, the two lines then “curve away” from each other, increasin in distance as one moves further from the points of intersection. Overall, it looks something like this (right):
Non-Euclidean geomotries play an important role in relativity theory and the geomotry of space/time continuum. Incidentally, in 1997, physicist Dr. Diana Taimina at Cornell University showed that one could model such spaces using common crochet.
Realizing these echoed shapes found in the Great Barrier Reefs, the sisters Wertheim looped kelps, fringed anemones and curly sponges to fashion their own wooly version. The collection grew as they solicited contributions from other artisans and began to create a crocheted coral reef. The result is The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, a beautiful exhibition including six reefs made up of tightly bunched mounds of brain coral, towered spires of pillar coral, blooms of carnation coral and wavy strands of kelp — all from yarn.
For 2008, the International Year of the Reef, exhibitions of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef have been held in New York at the NYU’s “Broadway Windows” space and the Winter Gardens at the World Financial Center in Battery Park. It will end its tours in London at the Hayward Gallery from June 6th — August 18th. The exhibition features the crocheted reefs displayed like giant aqauriums.
“Sister City” reefs are also underway in New York and London with support from the New York Crochet Guild, the Harlem Knitting Circle, the UK Craft Council and the Norton Family Foundation.
The Island that Inspired a Country
Since 1988, Timothy Richards has been creating exceptionally beautiful and precise sculptures of architecture in British Gypsum plaster, and incorporating etched brass, white metal, copper, hand-made glass, and gold.
All of the sculptures are made by hand by Richards and his small, dedicated team, from his workshop in Bath, England.
Central to the theme of these pieces is, of course, the architecture, but Richards aims to use his love of architecture and his skill in model making to tell the story of Architecture over the centuries.
Some of the sculptures are designed to be bookends. Others stand alone as collectible pieces. From the Royal Opera House to the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Courtauld’s Gallery to Harvard University, the House of Commons to the Spanish Government, and The Royal British Family, not only could some of the world’s most brilliant pieces of architecture be within your fingertips reach, holding your treasured tomes, or greeting you in the doorway as you hang up your coat, most of Richards sculptures come from commissioning so virtually any of the world’s architectural giants or small precious beauties can be yours.
This particular scultpure is a limited edition (of 300) run of Ellis Island. The front window facades are pierced through to allow light to penetrate through the model.
Over 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry to a man, woman, or child whose names are recorded in the great registry room on Ellis Island.
Currently, Ellis Island stands in peril of losing itself in time, disrepair, and all forgotten history. Nearly 30 hauntingly beautiful buildings built on Ellis Island’s forgotten South Side have been vacant, shuttered, and unseen by the public for well over half a century. These are the former buildings where immigrants in need of medical attention received care, their homeless, huddles masses found refuge and food and clean clothes, and newly sworn American citizens were carried to the mother land by ferry. Organizations, such as We Are Ellis Island and Save Ellis Island, are working tirelessly to raise money and awareness for the massive restoration, rehabibilitation and adaptive reuse project for the South Side of Ellis Island. In April 2007 the Ferry Building was reopened to the public and was the first building to be completed by the campaign.
Link: Timothy Richards | Moss Daily New
We Are Ellis Island | Save Ellis Island
Monumental Ecological Restoration and the Capitalist Stain
In what environmental groups say would be the largest ecological restoration in the country’s history, Florida has made plans to purchase U.S. Sugar Corporation, the nations largest producer of cane sugar.
The intention is to restore the Everglades by restoring the water flow from Lake Okeechobee, in the heart of the state, south of Florida Bay. The flow has been interrupted by commercial farming; the Everglades having suffered as a result. Some 68 animal and plant species are now considered at risk of extinction due to lack of fresh water and over 50 years of attempts to redirect water flow to farms and cities.
Under the terms of the tentative deal, U.S. Sugar would continue its farming and processing of cane sugar for six more years before closing the business and allowing the 187,000 acres of land to return to its natural state. Included in the purchase of the land is U.S. Sugar’s whole production facilities, including a new mill and a railroad. Florida has offered to pay U.S. Sugar $1.7 billion.
Though plans are not complete, state officials said they hope to sign a contract in September.
While the Everglades will rightly reclaim its land, the demise of U.S. Sugar Corporation will cost 1,700 people employment. But as Robert H. Buker Jr., the chief executive of U.S. Sugar said, “it’s the dollars and cents, and its the right thing to do.”
Don’t you just love how money, even in an act of good for the eco system — or rather, righting a past wrong — is the first and foremost concern and not, as Immanuel Kant would say, the act of doing good because it is your duty and that that act of good must be an end in and of itslef and not a means to an end. So 1,700 people will lose their job but, as Kant would see it, such is an accidental consequence to doing an act of good, which should be in and of itself the ends of the means. But its not. The fact remains that these people are losing their job and the Everglades are gaining back their land, but U.S. sugar isn’t giving the land back to the Everglades. It is selling the land to Florida and the douche bag capitalist above is going to bank because Florida citizens tax dollars, including the ones that will be losing their job in six years time, will be paying him for it. Such a monumental act of ecological restoration seems trite when you think about the picture as a whole instead of its pieces.
Link: NYTimes — “Florida to Buy Sugar Maker…” | U.S. Sugar Corporation
The image above is a thematic mapper image showing the Everglades, a.k.a. the “River of Grass”, contrasting sharply agsint the adjacent developed and agricultural areas. If Gilding is reading the map correctly, the brown area in top center of the image is the U.S. Sugar Corporation’s 187,000 acres and the patch of blue-green above it is Lake Okeechobee, the adjacent fresh water that has been cut off from the Everglades. Satellite image from
‘Midnight Special’
So, Gilding is getting ready for the next stage in her life–University Life. As of now the exact university has not been chosen, but research so far is putting a heavy lean towards University of Florida (Oh, how Daddy Gilding is going to have a heart attack when he finds out. Saying he’s not a Gator fan would be an understatement. We take football in the Southeast very seriously.)
And now Gilding has begun the arduous process of seeking scholarship and saving money to pay for this new era of study. So be a doll and and vote for her photograph on Brickfish. No form to fill out or information to be given, just click “Vote for this entry” and all is done. The image to the left is the photograph that Gilding has submitted to the contest. When you vote for Gilding’s entry you will find a description of the meaning behind the photograph.
Gilding loves all her readers. Especially the ones who go and vote for her entry. Remember, with one click you are helping to pay for this bright young student’s education. Sappy enough for you .^_~.
Link: Brickfish
While the American Government is Slacking…
Built between 1973-1985, these incredible structures [ verticle buildings in center of image ], known as Alt-Erlaa, are the work of architect Dr. Harry Glück. Alt-Erlaa is a 27-story complex that accommodates aproximately 10,000 low-income residents amongst a lush surrounding of greenery. Located in Vienna, Austria, this government funded complex includes in its amenities indoor and roof-top swimming pools, fitness rooms, solariums, saunas, tennis courts, schools, playgrounds, 2 medical centers, a church, a shopping mall, restaurants, and 3,400 underground parking spaces and a metro station. The complex even runs its own television station.
The Austrians apparently believe that for any housing project to succeed in the long-term, a stron community bond is essential.
Now, explain to Gilding why Austria can do this and America can’t!
Here are a few Links of interest:
- The complex’s official website: Alt-Erlaa
- Offical website of Dr. Harry Glück
- For an interview with Dr. Glück about Alt-Erlaa: Wiener Zeitung
- Wikipedia information on Alt-Erlaa
- More images of Alt-Erlaa available at deputydog
Via: deputydog
Intellect Without Imagination
“An exclusively intellectual education leads, by a very obvious process, to hard-heartedness and the contempt of all moral influences. An exclusively moral education tends to fatuity by the over-excitement of the sensibilities. An exclusively religious education ends in insanity, if it do[es] not take a directly opposite course and lead to atheism.”
–EDINBURGH REVIEW.
“Imagination rules the World.”
–NAPOLEAN BONAPARTE
Support the Arts in schools.
Link: Project Gutenberg–Elements of Character, by Mary G. Chandler
Advocacy: Americans for the Arts
Merging Great Design with Environmental Responsibility
Seen in early 2007, the Slinky chair, while famed to be the new designer chic furniture of the green movement, held all the charm of an expensive dorm room living necessity worth the money for both the space it could save and create. Hell, it looked pretty damn perfect for college student living period. Still, if one were to be truthful, it may look cool but the thing itself was pretty damn ugly.
Oh, but leave it to designers to make a thing better. Especially when egged on by a wave of fadalistic (though with all hope this one will stand the test of time) movement. Vivavi, an eco-friendly furniture and home design center, created the modular design seating for this years Armory show which allowed artist and designers to put their talents to the metle to create green furniture collections–merging great design with environmental responsibility. And thus Softseating Strips ‘evolved’…er, rather, recycled.
The Softseating Strips can be formed, joined, and stacked into infinite shapes. Made entirely from heavy-weight kraft paper, the strips are most commonly shaped as benches, stools, and low tables. Utilizing a flexible honey-comb structure, they are simply fanned out as desired or compressed to the size of a book for storage, and connect with magnets. Once worn, these pieces take on a shabby-chic (minus the puked up perfections of baby pink and blue) distressed look.
Not only do the Softseating Strips look much more sleek and chic than the Slinky Chair (even college students want their shit to look good), it still has all the perks of being compact and expandable, and the best part, even at its longest length the Softseat is a butt-load cheaper.
Link: Crunch Gear–Slinky Chair | Vivavi–Softseating Strips
Via: The Lazy Environmentalist
Stylish Mommy and Me Help the Search for a Cure
For the baby or cute kiddie in mind, or for the little girl inside who loves to wear her charm in her all-grown-up hair, Clips 4 A Cure has some of the most adorable, and noble, hair accessories around.
Started by a Mom and cancer survivor who wanted to contribute to cancer research, 10% of Clips 4 A Cure’s proceeds from the sale of their handmade hair accessories goes towards cancer research through the American Cancer Society and Komen Breast Center.
Link: Clips 4 A Cure
Sail the Wind, Dam the Lake
“The dam, which would be located over a gorge at Lake Lagoda in north-west Russia, includes a cup-shaped spinnaker sail, believed to be the first of its kind, which will generate renewable energy by funnelling the wind through an attached turbine.
The spinnaker shape is similar to the mainsail of a yacht, and is thought to be particularly effective in capturing wind.
Project architect Laurie Chetwood, said that the shape of the sail was influenced by functionality and a desire to produce something “sculptural”.
He added: “The sail looks like a bird dipping its beak into the water, which will be much less of a blot on this beautiful and unblemished landscape.
“But it is also highly effective at capturing the wind because it replicates the work of a dam and doesn’t let the wind escape in the way it does using traditional propellers.”
If granted planning, the dam will be 25 meters high and boast a 75 meter span when it goes on site next year. The practice is also looking at applying for planning permission for a similar scheme at another gorge, further up the valley.”
Link: bd
Via: Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2
In the End
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
~ Martin Luther King
