Day of Service: Where is your project?

Welcome to the first annual Day of Service! On Saturday, Sept. 29, children will be leading the way to a better learning environment in our schools. They’re backed up by parents and teachers who are all working hand-in-hand to stress that Where We Learn Matters.

The concept is a simple one. Ask students and parents to look around their school and find a green project that needs to be done. It could be an edible garden, a schoolyard cleanup or decorated recycle bins. These simple projects are designed to remind school administrators, local officials and community leaders that healthy sustainable schools are important to our children and the community.

The Center for Green Schools is the organizing force behind this largely grass-roots effort. But the emphasis here is not on water efficiency or energy envelopes. The point of Sept. 29 is to wake us all up a little to where children are learning and remind us how much it matters.

Check out the Center’s site for service, Green Apple. Scroll down the home page to do a search for events in your area. Almost 10 percent of all schools in the U.S. have an event, so chances are you’ll have an opportunity to green up a location right in your area.

Be sure to bring a green apple! Take a pic of your child at your project site with the apple and post it to the Green Apple site. There it will join other pictures from across the globe. The projects and sites are very different, but these children all have the same goal: to remind us that Where We Learn Matters. 

Design Festival 2012: Something for Everyone

It's easy to be distracted by sustainable design’s engineering. To be dazzled by the triple-paned windows and the attic’s insulation coefficients. 

But this week it’s the art of design that's taking center stage in London. That’s where the London Design Festival is taking shape and inspiring designers from all walks, including architects, artists and audiophiles. No matter your profession, the art of design is on center stage.

The Sound Portal design is a rubberized black mass in the center of Trafalgar Square, looking perfectly out of place amongst the classical square’s architecture and statues. 

It is the brainchild of think-tank BE OPEN, whose mission is to foster creativity and innovation. Visitors to the portal will be treated to “soundscapes” on some of the most advanced audio equipment in the world. Designers say the point of BE OPEN is to remind visitors to appreciate the sounds as well as the sights of the Festival.

How much adventure can 12 hardwood chairs have? Plenty if they fall into the hands of Royal College of Art students. The American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) wanted to advertise American lumber without the usual pop up tent and tradeshow table. Instead, they asked the students to use the lumber in new, ecological and interesting ways. The art installation, called Out of the Woods: Adventures of 12 Hardwood Chairs, coincide with research the AHEC is doing into the Life Cycle Assessment of their products. See more on the research as well as pictures of the 12 chairs here.

And then there is the installation by the artist Kris Ruhs. The German artist has filled a post-industrial display building with swaths and piles of shredded tires, inner tubes and other recycled and found materials. Sounds like a junk yard, but the installations remind you that all these materials can be graceful again in the right hands. Called Landing on Earth, the installation makes the user think about all the materials routinely tossed away in our daily lives and how they can come alive again. 

Inspired installations, each with a message to think beyond the everyday in your design.