(clockwise from top) "Gold Coast", "Pompeii", raw safety glass in bag
Quick story – When I was a little girl, I found some broken windshield glass in the alley near our home. My mother, being the crafty sort at the time, decided to bring it home to experiment with. Her project, as I recall, involved gluing the pieces of glass around a flower pot for a sort of sparkly mosaic effect. We’ll never know what the end result might have been, since my toddler sister decided that tempered glass would make a delicious appetizer to the lunch my mother had left the room to make. Although a frantic trip to the doctor revealed no lasting damage, the great tempered glass experiment quickly made it’s way to the trash, never to be tried again.
I’m so happy that Ellen Blakeley, artist and owner of Ellen Blakeley Studio, had better results! Just look at the amazing tiles she has created from recycling tempered glass…
A major dilemma for interior designers trying to lessen their environmental impact is the need for a sample library. Although people outside the industry might wonder why we can’t just switch to looking at things online, we designers know that is simply impossible. Above and beyond the desire to have a tangible material in our hands, there is simply no way to render color online that is accurate. Besides the variation in image uploading and monitor color rendition, is the simple fact that all materials reflect light in different ways, creating color perception issues. Anyone who has seen a flat vs. a glossy paint sample of the same color can attest to that. Add to all this the need to see samples for quality control, and the desire to pull samples together during the creative process, and you can see why designers need such large storage spaces!
From time to time I run across some innovative or creative ways to lesson the overall impact of all this sampling, and I though I would share a couple of those ideas here:
The interioRevolution is a design blog devoted exclusively to sustainable interior design. Through product reviews, guest blogs by experts in their fields, special features and spirited discussion, the interioRevolution provides new knowledge and expands the dialogue on sustainable interior design.
