While we’re all for donating old, unwanted books, there are some volumes that we find it impossible to get rid of — whether for sentimental reasons or because they’re just too cumbersome to carry. If your bookshelf is getting tight and you’re feeling crafty, why not re-purpose a favorite read into something that you’ll be able to use around the house? Click through for our 10 favorite DIY ideas, in order of intensity. Heads up, most of them will render the book more or less unreadable, so you don’t want to use anything that you might regret later.
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Lucy Walker‘s Waste Land, a documentary film about artist Vik Muniz’s extraordinary project of creating monumental portraits from junk in the world’s largest garbage dump, thrilled New Yorkers on the opening night of Premiere Brazil! at MoMA last week. A collaboration between the Museum of Modern Art and the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, the all-Brazilian program highlights the New York premiere of ten feature films and four shorts, as well as the screening of two classic films.
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Global Inheritance is a growing network of progressive-minded citizens with well-developed artistic sides, who plan to save the world through art and music. Seriously.
The group is best known for its TRASHed: Art of Recycling campaign, in which artists transform waste bins into functional, portable galleries — a Coachella staple now expanding to Miami’s Ultra Festival and into Argentina. But there’s much more to the story — from LA’s recent (and Portland’s imminent) Environmentaland awareness pop-ups to human-powered DJ tents. Keep up — and do your part — via the Global Inheritance website.
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True to its slogan, “Where Recycling Meets Design,” online community Superuse.org highlights cool projects by designers and artists working with secondhand materials and cast-off objects.
While some efforts are predictably more inspired than others, the sheer variety is captivating — ranging from pocket-sized productions to ambitious architectural feats, and from straight-up useful to simply fun. Turns out plenty of people have big ideas for old shipping containers, shampoo bottles, and airplane fuselages.
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In our continuing obsession with shipping containers-turned-recycled cities, today’s post looks at student housing across college campuses worldwide. No shocker, undergrads — the masters of repurposing something old into something new — are at the forefront of this eco- (and usually wallet-friendly) trend. After the jump, check out our favorite shipping container-dormitories. Suddenly we’re feeling inspired to study abroad…
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Have you ever seen that short film The Story of Stuff? It’s a 20-minute online documentary about the “materials economy” that gives a relatively simple explanation about why our current system of consumption isn’t sustainable or just. I thought of the film when I learned about Nike Trash Talk, a basketball sneaker that won a Gold award at this year’s International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). Read More »
