finalists « Inhabitat – Spring Greening Competition

This is a light fixture made from aluminum zip-top lids pried off empty soda cans.

If you want to see (and vote on) some of the coolest, greenest functional art ever (built by amazingly inventive people using reclaimed stuff), here are some projects that will wow you.  If you're not wowed, please tell me why.

Comments

[Abi]

mag,
im def wowed.. my favorite is the star shaped tinker thing! love it... you certainly have great taste in this... oh my goodness!

[Michael]

I'm not wowed. Most of the projects are made of materials that could have been returned to the market to make future goods. Promoting "green" ideas like these lead to more mining and more forest clearing.

[Abi]

mag tell me did you vote for your favorite one?... if i wanted to vote where would i go to?
thanks in advanced.

ps whats your favorite one so far?

[ToolGirl]

Good point Michael.

[ToolGirl]

On the other hand, taking material out of the cycle of being sorted, melted down and refabricated into new single-use objects (like soda cans) seems like a good thing if the existing material can be turned into something useful and functional.

[Michael]

I was going to say something to that effect. Some of the works showed impressive creativity.

When I lived in NYC, there was a small junk yard on the river. Next to the yard was a park where artists could take material from the yard and create sculptures.

It would be interesting to see a similar project to the one you link to that used materials that can't be recycled.

[ToolGirl]

I wonder if the junk yard art-making events that you witnessed (and participated in?) were a precursor of this cool NYC phenom - http://fixerscollective.org/main/

[Michael]

No. It was good old greed and government shakedown. A Costco wanted to go in on the water front and the city said fine but you're going to buy all the abandoned land, clean it up and build parks too.

Costco went cheap and kept the junk yard as an artist resource site.