Readymade, the book by the founders of the magazine with the same name, is a perfect marriage between sustainability and stellar book design. It features dozens of useful projects (organized by material: paper, plastic, wood, metal, glass, and fabric) most of which can be created with discarded materials from around the house. Although the publication has been out for a few years, I constantly return to appreciating the clarity of its design vision. If you love DIY and/or an amazing book with tons of projects and humorous tidbits and facts, this is the must-have for your library.

Skipping the plastic bag while shopping isn’t just great for the environment – the alternatives can also be so much more fashionable. Stockholm’s Stadsmission, the Swedish equivalent to the Salvation Army, repurposes clothes and fabrics that can’t be retailed into super eco-friendly shopping bags. Created in collaboration with the renowned Swedish architecture group Claesson Koivisto Rune, this line of shopping bags is marketed under the brand Remake.

Despite the frigid cold after a giant snowstorm, a glimpse of spring was in the air today as I walked by the Anthropologie flagship in Rockefeller Center. Their store window displays were not only spring-themed, they also have a wonderful eco-theme, too. They’re made from plastic bottles collected from their customers.



MSLK’s two eco-art installations “2663 Urban Tumbleweeds” and “Watershed” are featured in a new art compilation entitled “Urban Interventions – Personal Projects in Public Places.“

The editor, Matthias Huebner, states:
Evolving from graffiti and street art, urban interventions are the next generation of artwork to hit public space. Using any and all of the components that make up urban landscapes, these mostly spatial works bring art to the masses. They turn the street into a studio, laboratory, club, and gallery and challenge us to rediscover our environment and interact with it in new ways. This is the first book to document these very current, personal art projects in a comprehensive way. It shows the growing connections and interplay of this scene with art, architecture, performance, and installation as it turns public spaces into surprising and provoking individual experiences.

To order an advanced copy, click here.
For more information, follow the jump…

This spring, Socrates Sculpture Park will be producing a show that seeks to examine the presence of nature within the fabric of urban life. We at MSLK are always looking for opportunities to create awareness on the impact of our mass consumption and have retooled our two eco-art installations to fit this bill. Since we believe in acting locally and thinking globally, we’re always thrilled when we get the opportunity to display our work in our own Long Island City community. Here are our two proposals:

We just produced a short video about our environmental commitment. You can see it above, or on our fresh, new site: www.mslk.com.

Let us know what you think!

Watershed Assembly at MSLK 5/24/09 from MSLK on Vimeo.

MSLK’s newest eco-art endeavor got into high gear this weekend with the help of some great friends. 867 bottles — more than half of the 1,500 we’re planning for Figment — were strung together. As you can see above, I even managed to shoot some footage of the whole day which I edited into a short film about the making of Watershed.

Weeks of bottle collection combined with weeks of testing the different rigging needed to assemble the project. Our next assembly is June 7th, everyone is invited to participate in building this together. Better yet, experience all that’s fun and amazing at Figment on June 13 at noon.

Very special thanks to all those who came out on Saturday to lend a hand—you are a brave bunch indeed.

Happy Earth Day, folks. Wondering what you can do today to contribute? Click “Read More” below for six ideas you can share with friends & family members, letting them know one small step you’d like to take towards becoming more green, as well as sharing important earth-friendly facts.

The best part? You can click on the images to generate an automatic email to send (which is like, totally green, too…)

I guess it is the end of the party. Following the amazing courtyard design last year by Work Architects, last week PS1 announced that the design above, by MOS architects Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith, would be gracing the courtyard this summer. MOS wins the 10th annual architectural invitation to design the courtyard space that houses PS1’s summertime outdoor dance party. An honor that grants them $70,000 to fulfill their dream design.

Perhaps it is just my intense love of last year’s exciting proposal, but personally, I can’t help but feel like the architects may have run out of things to do.

I would like to declare a personal New Year’s resolution. I need to drink more water in 2009 and in order to do that I need to bring my water bottle with me everywhere I go. I find that the minute I’m away from work/home I’m thirsty, and if I don’t have that bottle handy finding water while on the go can be tough.

The other thing I’ve found recently is that clubs, arenas, and other venues no longer like to provide ice water from the tap in a glass or with drinking fountains. These days Americans see water as a way to make money, especially if they can sell it for $3-$5 a bottle. I certainly don’t believe that water is free; I actually believe it will become the liquid gold of our generation, but I don’t believe it needs to come in a disposable bottle. The actual cost to the environment of the plastic water bottle is MUCH higher than even the value of that precious natural resource inside.

This community plastic bag dispenser on the streets in Williamsburg made me smile. The design is kind of a cross between a bird feeder and those “Take a Penny, Leave a Penny” dishes often found at checkouts. It allows people to leave a bag they no longer have a need for, and gives bags to those who might need one in a pinch (as a dog owner, I can say this would’ve come in handy a few times). Unlike MSLK’s own Urban Tumbleweeds, it’s not necessarily meant to bring attention to our over-consumption of  plastic bags, but helps give them a second life.

It seems that MSLK’s awareness campaign to reduce plastic bag consumption is working…okay maybe we had nothing to with it, but Mayor Bloomberg recently announced a plan to charge NYC shoppers 6 cents per bag. Sounds great to us. Just a few weeks after Ireland adopted a similar tax of 33 cents per bag — plastic bag use dropped 94 percent.

You guys won’t mind, right? I assume you are all already armed with your resuable totes…

On a recent trip to Whole Foods, something caught our eye that was so incredibly simple, so obvious, that it made us wonder why it hasn’t always been this way: A biodegradable flowerpot.

Instead of buying flowers in the standard plastic pot which you inevitably dispose of after transplanting the plant into your garden, this eco-friendly, unbelievably easy solution literally embodies the concept of sustainable design, the pot returns to soil itself. No mess, no fuss. Just dig a hole, and set it in. Even the tag is biodegradable making doing good practically effortless.

If you want to keep these on your stoop, that’s fine, too. In most cases, the pot will outlast the flowers. Once you’re done, simply put whole thing into your compost bin.

Why isn’t everything designed this way?

MSLK is commonly asked what our process is like working on a project. As is the case with designers, it’s often more informative for us to show rather than tell. We recently completed an invitation design for a luncheon at which local Long Island City companies will be honored for their green business practices. Read more to see how we developed the invitation from sketch to completion.

First of all, I’d like to formally give a huge thanks to everyone who donated, helped, supported, and promoted 2663 Urban Tumbleweeds. Really, the outpouring of support we received was astounding.

Some artists could wait their whole lives to get as much support as we received. We happened to land it on our first endeavor. I know this has less to do with the project and more to do with the message — which was timely, informative, and a real-feel good piece. This was our intention, and we wanted to make a piece that touched on all those principals. We wanted to turn facts into art and connect people with the environment.

The thing I am most proud about with Urban Tumbleweeds is the number of people who’ve already made a changes in their lives as a result of just knowing about this project. To everyone who’s started using reusable totes, you really deserve a pat on the back.

This past week I attended the Directions textile show at the suggestion of one of my friends from Fashion News Workshop. This particular friend thought I would enjoy Directions because they have a whole new division dedicated to sustainability. While I found this part of the show exciting—I especially love the rubber made from recycled tires—what shocked me most was the entire purpose of the show was to inspire fashion designers on new fabric patterns and emerging trends in fashion design.

Most New Yorkers get our news from our beloved local news station, NY1. What it lacks in slickness compared to network news, it more than makes up for in depth and breadth with a focus on local events and happenings.

Our call for plastic bag donations for our 2663 Urban Tumbleweeds project got the attention of Stephanie Simon, NY1’s arts reporter, and she came out to our studio the other day to interview Sheri and I as we prepare to pack everything off to Burning Man.

Amazingly, the two-minute segment has been on a continual feed throughout the weekend. The best part is that the underlying message of our piece (reduce, reuse, recycle) has reached so many New Yorkers.

Click the image above to watch the video, or read a transcript of the segment here.

I’m not a big car person, but I tend to have a soft spot for certain vintage cars. I find most modern cars (mini-excluded) to be rather boring and personality-less. The bodies all look similar to me, and they all come in the same handful of colors. Occasionally I’ll spot a car like this one that makes me wonder what happened to designing a beautiful car? This Ford Thunderbird (circa 1970s?) may just be my perfect car (hybrid engine forthcoming). The lines are so perfectly long and elegant. Not to mention it comes in my favorite color. If I owned this, I think I’d have to move into the neighborhood so I could park it in front of this mural everyday. It was even parked on the corner of Ellen Street!

It makes sense that cars like this are still around and people care for them. Let’s see if we feel the same nostalgia for 2008 Camrys in a few years…

This weekend, Katie, Jason and I took a roadtrip to Philadelphia to visit friends. I had heard about Terrain, a garden center store in the suburbs, so we made a little detour on our way home. Having read it was owned by the Urban Outfitters crew, I was pretty excited to see what they would do with a palette of plants. It turned out to be a graphic designer/gardener wannabe’s delight! The expansive store mixes indoor and outdoor space by incorporating a series of farmhouses and greenhouses that connect the outdoor garden areas. While the focus is on the garden, they also sell a variety housewares and have a nice little cafe. More pictures after the jump.