Poppin' my cork

Check out the new face of cork floors. Zoom in on that image and ooooh and ahhhh. That's the newest incarnation of a cork floor and it's a cork mosaic floor.

Here's how it works. Corks cut for use as wine stoppers are thinly sliced and glued to a square foot sheet of paper. Then they're installed with mastic and grouted in the same way one would install any other mosaic tile.

Cork is resilient, water-resistant, sound deadening, flexible and renewable --all pluses in my book. Where this stuff really starts to shine though is that it can be stained to any color you'd like (that makes sense because after all, it's made from the same cellulose that any wood product is). BUT, it can also be sealed and used in a wet area like a shower floor or a spa.

This is too cool. I've never met a mosaic I didn't like and this stuff's great from every angle.

These tiles are made by the Canadian firm, the Jelinek Cork Group. Jelinek has an extensive list of cork product offerings and I agree with them that cork doesn't get the attention in the US that it deserves.

In addition to their well-done website, Jelinek operates and online store and outlet called The Corkhouse. At the Corkhouse you can browse through their flooring offerings, but where else but The Cork House are you going to find a cork purse or a cork hat?

Pre-fab fabulous

Finally! I can say something positive about Lowe's.

On the heels of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina three years ago, Lowe's got involved in the pre-fab housing industry to meet the pressing housing needs of the Northern Gulf Coast. They seem to have tapped into a wellspring of unmet need because Lowe's is now selling a line of "kit houses" a la Sears at the turn of the last century. This line of kit houses from Lowe's features the designs of such New Urbanist visionaries as Marianne Cusato, Andres Duany, Eric Moser, W.A Lawrence and Geoffrey Mouen. And much in the same way that Sears did it a hundred years ago, these houses are available for purchase as a set of plans or as a set of plans plus every screw and 2x4 needed to build one of these admittedly cool houses. At an average of $55 a square foot, these beauties are proving that sustainable housing can be affordable housing and still be cool housing.

Meet the Plumen

Another one of the blogs I read is called the Sustainable Style Foundation. The Sustainable Style Foundation is an international, member-supported, non-profit organization that's dedicated to promoting sustainable design and sustainable lives. SSF combs the world looking for innovative and beautiful ideas and things that are helping to nudge a consumerist society toward a more sensible yet still fantastic direction. Check them out some time. Anyhow, their site featured a story about this beauty, the Plumen.


The Plumen is the brain child of a London-based design and manufacturing firm called Hulger. The design team at Hulger has re-thought the utilitarianism of the compact fluorescent light bulb and the result is the Plumen. So the concepts are done and the prototypes have been made, now all they need is a manufacturer. Anybody out there in the fluorescent bulb business?

The Story of Stuff

I watched this 20-minute video last week and it's given me more to think about than I ever expected I'd find on You Tube.

There is a growing awareness in me and in a whole lot of other people that life as we now live it in the west isn't sustainable. This quest for sustainability is an outgrowth of the environmentalist movement and that's not up for debate. The mainstream environmentalist movement fails utterly when it offers solutions though. Attempting to turn back the clock to a time of a smaller human population who hunted and gathered for a living isn't a solution. Human technology got us into the state we're in and human technology will get us out of it. The first step in unleashing the power of the human mind on this mess is to realize that there is a huge and multi-headed problem to be dealt with. Western-style consumerism is at the root and western consumerism is grave need of some rethinking. Rethinking by me, rethinking by you. As this video points out so eloquently, buying a radio for $4.99 is at best a short-term win if it's a win at all. Please pass around this video. You can find out more about this video and the foundation that produced it at their website: http://www.storyofstuff.com/

How green is your project?

The gang over at Dwell Magazine have joined with the AIA, that's the American Institute of Architects to those of you not in the know, and together they are hosting a contest to promote sustainable home improvement projects.

If you're the proud owner of a green home improvement project and you'd like to show it off, go to the entry form on Dwell's website and enter. All you need to do is submit up to four photos of your project and write a simple, 250-word description. Then Dwell and the AIA will evaluate your entry. The most inspired projects will be posted on Dwell's website and if that weren't good enough, the winner will win $1000 to use toward his or her next project. Two runners-up will each receive $500 in addition to being posted on Dwell's website. Hurry though, the deadline for entries is June 30th.

If you don't have a green project of your own to show off, don't lose heart. The pages of Dwell Magazine and the AIA's website are great places to go to and find inspiration to start one.