Organic Fabrics

Fabrics, whether for furniture upholstering or drapes, are a prime area to go organic in your home. Conventional cotton accounts for 25% of insecticide use and 10% of pesticide use worldwide, despite using only 3% of the world's cropland. These chemicals infiltrate the soil and are taken up by growing cotton, and thus end up in fibers and fabrics. Most non-organic wool is processed with solvents and detergents that can be toxic. Choosing organic cotton and wool, as well as alternative fibers like bamboo and hemp, can reduce or eliminate the chemical load in your fabrics and upholsteries.


Several companies offer organic textiles made from natural materials in a variety of designs and textures. Twill Textiles offers a line of fabrics, the Climatex Lifecycle Home collection (see image above), that is produced using a 100% biodegradable production system that is one-of-a-kind in the textile industry.

Mod Green Pod produces organic cotton fabrics that are silk-screened by hand with water-based paint. They also offer vinyl-free walpaper, which is produced without the use of chemical finishers. The images below are from their print collection.










Aurora Silk offers a range of products including organic cotton fabrics, organic hemp fabrics, and "Peace Silk," silk produced through a process in which the life cycle of the silk-producing caterpillar is allowed to complete itself. In other words, cruelty-free silk. Aurora products are produced using natural dyes, and the company offers workshops on the use of these dyes.

Other purveyors of organic fabrics include California-based Ambatalia, New Mexico-based Near Sea Naturals, and Manhattan-based Designtex, which recently launched a sustainable home line.

The Biophilic Home - Part 2

In a previous post, we spoke about the biophilia hypothesis, which states that humans have a primal affinity for the natural world, and that the modern weakening of the human-nature connection, especially in urban environments, can lead to personal and societal feelings of dissatisfaction and alienation. Biophilic design encourages the use of natural, even living, materials and the mimicry of natural forms (biomimicry) to reestablish this connection.

One striking account of the benefits of even a visual connection with nature is found in Roger Ulrich's book Biophilia, Biophobia, and Natural Landscapes:

[Hospital] patients were assigned essentially randomly to rooms that were identical except for window view: one member of each pair overlooked a small stand of deciduous trees; the other had a view of a brown brick wall. Patients with the natural window view had shorter postoperative hospital stays, had fewer negative comments in nurses’ notes (“patient is upset,” “needs much encouragement”), and tended to have lower scores for minor post-surgical complications such as persistent headache or nausea requiring medication.
(Ulrich 1984: pp. 106-107)

Of course, living in New York City, we often don't have the luxury of a natural view, but that doesn't mean we need abandon biophilic design. One way that nature can be brought into our homes is through the use of design elements that mimic natural forms, and options abound. Gore Design Co.'s Signature Erosion Sink, for example, is inspired by layers of rock worn down over millennia.


The LEGEND bookcase, designed by Christophe Delcourt for Roche-Bobois, evokes the form of a tree. New York City-based Clodagh Design produced a custom concrete conference table with a C-channel groove positioned lengthwise down the center of the table and planted with wheatgrass (photo by Daniel Aubry).













Some of the most innovative fusions of nature and furniture are still in the development phase. In a project at the Lycée Jean Monnet in the French city of Vendée, industrial design students designed and built prototypes of furniture incorporating live plants. These designs were displayed at an exhibit titled Espace Inspiration at the 2005 Salon du Vegetal horticulture show in Angers. Projects included Ter'Happy, a "haven of greenery" where an arc of bamboo forms a living curtain around a seating area to facilitate relaxation and other quiet activities.

Greenbuild 2006

Greenbuild, the annual conference of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), was held last November in Denver. The three-day event is a gathering of green-building industry professionals featuring the latest advancements in green-building design, construction, project financing, and building management. Greenbuild 2006 was significantly larger than previous gatherings, with 13,000 attendees and 700 exhibitors, leading Metropolis Magazine to beg the question: has green gone mainstream?

USGBC president and CEO Rick Fedrizzi turned the question into a catchphrase: “immediate and measurable.” Green building needs “immediate and measurable” impacts; we need “immediate and measurable results in our efforts to reverse global warming.” It was the topic of the week...

Exhibitors included Sherwin-Williams; Roofscapes, Inc.; the American Society of Landscape Architects; and Baltix Sustainable Furniture.

Greenbuild 2007 is scheduled for November 7-9 in Chicago.

Eco-Friendly Furniture

A new wave of style-conscious, eco-friendly furniture lines is quickly expanding the options for those who want their couch to be green without actually being, well...


iannone:design is a Philadelphia-based firm whose eco-friendly furniture line includes this kirei-board coffee table. (Kirei is sustainably produced from sorghum stalks.)


Brooklyn-based Scrapile offers furniture, like this dining table, made from collected and repurposed wood scraps.




And the list goes on: MIO, a Philadelphia-based firm, offers wallpaper, lighting, and furniture chosen for their sustainability, both environmental and social, in design and manufacture. Uhuru, a Brooklyn-based design-and-build furniture company, is based on the same green business model. San Francisco-based Rhubarb Decor touts itself as "aesthetics with ethics." Catchy.