Modern Design on Shine

Roundup: Picnic Plateware

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The round up of picnic place settings in today’s Los Angeles Times puts your old paper plates to shame. Check out their picks here: + Above: The Snap-A-Party sets by Fred are $12 for a set of four. + Preserve plates and cups by Recycline are made of recycled plastic, with 10 tumblers selling for...

Say It Silverware

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British designer Kathryn Hinton showcased her cheeky tableware at London's Royal College of Art Show in early June. The Exhausted series (above and below), which includes cutlery and a cake knife, conforms listlessly to the shape of plate and table, while the Non-sharing bowl (bottom) is...

Before/After: Lake Street Kitchen Reno

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San Francisco-based architect Cass Calder Smith completed this renovation last year on Lake Street in the Richmond district of San Francisco. His clients, who enjoy entertaining at home, wanted a kitchen where friends could gather while they cooked.

Birds, Bats, and Bees

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These days designers have animals on the brain.

The critter-friendly habitats that Fritz Haeg created for the Whitney Biennial still stand in the museum courtyard, three weeks after the show closed.

More recently, Phillips de Pury & Company, a New York-based auctioneer, commissioned 24 designers, including Max Lamb, Martino Gamper, Jurgen Bey, and Michael Young (above), to create habitats for the United Kingdom’s endangered bee, bat, and bird species. While taking the living requirements of each species into account, the designers used only the company’s waste—crates, catalogues, wood, and cardboard used to pack, ship, and display artwork—to make these works.

Shop from your kitchen countertop

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Is the Internet making grocery shopping obsolete? Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article on the Ikan, a new kitchen gadget that uses the internet to create grocery lists and facilitate delivery. The contraption, which comes in neutral white and retails for $400, can be mounted on a wall or...

Mower Swap for Sustainability

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Lawnmowers guzzle 800 million gallons of gas annually and account for five percent of U.S. air pollution, according to the EPA. Several cities are hosting an exchange program that allows residents to trade gas mowers for an eco-friendly alternative at a reduced price: the battery-powered Neuton CE...

Chilean Retreat

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Arch Daily is fast becoming one of my favorite new blogs for architectural marvels. Recently featured was this poured concrete house located on a beachside complex called Ocho al Cubo, in Chile. Architect Sebastian Irarrazaval has designed the house to encourage a variety of circulation routes, whether accessing programmatic spaces along the building’s perimeter or through an open patio at the center. The lack of a rigid layout speaks to the main function of the property, a leisure retreat that promotes the wandering of the spirit.

West Virginia Shack

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The American romance with the shed-like home continues with this shack by Maryland-based architect Jeffery Broadhurst. The home, which Broadhurst built with friends and neighbors for his family in rural West Virginia, can be accessed by off-road vehicles only. The front façade is a retractable door looking out from the mountainside, and the steel roof collects rainwater. [More photos after the jump.]

Green Roofs, From the Ground Up

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As I’ve previously noted, green roofs are thriving, with 2.4 million square feet of green roof planted between 2006 and 2007. But with this growing interest in green roofs has sprung the myth that they’re simple, DIY projects. Not so, cautions Marni Horwitz, a green roof specialist in New York...