You guys already know how much I love recycled design, especially when the objects can still be recognized as what they once were. If you’re just melting down water bottles and turning them into toothbrushes, I have almost zero interest. I mean, I still think it’s a great idea, and important for the planet, but it doesn’t excite me as a designer. I get psyched when I see a chair, and then, upon closer inspection, realize it’s made out of old radiators. To me, that is like, the coolest thing ever.
I have some fun trivia about recycled design. For example, do you know what is considered the very first form of recycled design? It has been around for many hundreds of years, and is kind of important in the DKos community. Those are the only hints I am giving. Okay...it’s QUILTS!!!
You see, many centuries ago, making fabric of any kind was so labor intensive that even a simple shirt was worth more than it’s weight in gold. Literally. So when clothing or drapes or whatever wore out, it was only sensible to stitch together the undamaged remnants of the fabric into a new useful item. Why not a cozy blanket?
Another fun bit of recycling trivia — there is only ONE known instance of double recycled design, i.e. something that was recycled for a new purpose and then recycled AGAIN for a third use. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photograph, but it happened in Mexico. The object started as an automotive tire. When the tire wore out, it was remade into the soles of a pair of sandals. And when the sandals wore out, a piece of the sole was nailed to a wooden gate to replace a broken hinge!
Speakng of tires, the only example I know of the City of New York using recognizably recycled design are these things:
They are cut from old truck tires, and used to hold down traffic barricades, like this:
It fills me with delight to know that Mayor DeBlasio, and likely, elected politicians across the nation have all approved the budgeting for these clever items. I love the fact that the orange barricades themselves were certainly pre-designed to fit inside the inner diameter of a discarded truck tire!
I only wish there were more similarly recycled designs around us everywhere.
What about you?
What do you want to talk about today?
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