It's curtains for solar power

No, I mean that literally. Who says that solar power requires bulky, roof-mounted glass panels? Certainly not Sheila Kennedy, principal architect of Kennedy & Violich Architecture in Boston. Kennedy has developed what she's calling solar textiles; thin, membrane-like materials that can be draped or can cover walls or roofs. In a prototype she just finished displaying in Germany called "Soft House" (it's what's pictured here), Kennedy made patio draperies for a pre-fab structure that could generate 16,000 watt-hours of electricity.

Solar textiles are new and they utilize organic photovoltaics (OPVs), the next generation in solar power. At this stage of the game though, OPVs are less efficient than the old-school silicon-based photovoltaics. OPVs are the new name of the game though, and look for their efficiencies to improve as their prices come down over time. Brace yourself kids, the future is now.

Many thanks to my pals at Treehugger.com for the heads up on this terrific story.

Shoal, shoal, shoal

What a great word, shoal. I love it when a lighting designer turns to the natural world for inspiration and that's precisely what Dominic Bromley did when he came up with Shoal. For anyone who's never turned on the Discovery Channel, a shoal is a school of fish in a tightly circling configuration.

Dominic Bromley is an industrial designer turned lighting designer for Scabetti in the UK. Scabetti specializes in gorgeous, custom household objects and Bromley's responsible for their lighting.

The shoal is made from 284 individually sculpted bone china fish and they circle a tube light. bone china is translucent, so each of the fish in the light fixture glows and casts a shadow. The effect in a room must be stunning. It almost seems unfair to call this a light fixture. What it is more than anything is a sculpture.

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?