Spanish fast fashion company Zara has come under intense fire recently for failing to address a Greenpeace report released last year outlining the textile industry’s deleterious impact on China’s waterways. Called Dirty Laundry, the report unveiled that persistent and bio-accumulative hazardous chemicals with hormone-disrupting properties are released into the same water that residents rely on […]
Would innovative waste disposal devices make for tidier Jordanians? Year Two in the Hashemite Kingdom, and my honeymoon with Amman is kaput. It’s impossible to keep the romance alive when your beloved is so totally…trashy. At work, shopping for trash receptacles for a new airport terminal, I stumbled across some wacky waste bins that might’ve saved […]
Just when we thought that urban cycling had reached its zenith, Israeli designer Udi Rimon essentially rendered Tel Aviv’s cars redundant with his design of Tel-O-Porter – a genius bike trailer that connects to the city’s shared Tel-O-Fun bicycles. Made of aluminum tubes and stainless steel mesh, the trailer doubles as a hand held cart and […]
Izhar Gafni and the same team behind the already world-famous cardboard bicycle have added a few other items to their repertoire, including a cardboard wheelchair. After news of the dirt-cheap cardboard bicycle raced around the globe, an international non-profit organization contacted Israelis Nimrod Elmish and Izhar Gafni of I.G. Cardboard Technologies about developing a cardboard wheelchair […]
Execute some alchemy and turn random junk and recyclables into a smart toy for your toddler. This takes so little time and attracts such rave reviews you’ll be tempted to make a batch for future gift-giving, school projects, and maybe replace birthday “goody bags” with a toy that will get real use. An Amman school […]
This is the fourth time that the Biomimicry 3.8 institute is staging their international design competition and this year they are inviting students to submit water management solutions that take inspiration from nature. Biomimicry is not a well known design strategy in the Middle East, though it is possible to learn what camels and scorpions […]
Mornings are getting darker. Need a pick me up? Tick tock: try an eco clock. Israel daylight savings already sent summertime packing, but the rest of us in the Middle East will be switching in the weeks ahead from Daylight Savings to standard winter time. Blast yourself out of that darkened bedroom with the help of […]
Where’s a charger when you need one? My device-addicted household is always running short on chargers for cell phones and laptops and iPods. I plug in my phone and come back to find it’s migrated to someone’s Kindle. What’s the impact of all this techno-juicing on the environment? A co-worker just nabbed the coolest birthday gift: the […]
An engineering student used LEGO to help restore an ancient Egyptian mummy case at Cambridge University. The 10th Century BC Hor Mummy case excavated in 1896 from a Luxor temple had been languishing in a museum basement for the last fifty years. Its face had been torn to pull out the mummy it previously encased, […]
Mashrabiya screens are a common element in Middle Eastern architecture and yet few people outside the design world realize how much work goes into making them. In order to unveil the extraordinary care and patience that goes into each handcrafted screen, Beirut-based Carwan, the Middle East’s first popup art gallery, commissioned mischer’traxler to design the Mashrabiya […]
Turkish designers who anticipate severe water shortages in the next few decades have designed the dualWash – a waterless dish washer that cleans single dishes after every single use. Mitigating huge stacks of dirty dishes and waste water resources, the dual dishwasher and cabinet uses carbon dioxide to rid dishes of crumbs and sauce and other […]
Sarine Zaken is the world’s first designer to incorporate living bacteria into clothing and jewelry that people can actually wear! A third year student at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, the young Israeli fantasized about incorporating something alive into her final project. While that may seem a bit creepy at first, a chance encounter led her to […]
Icelandic artist Elín Hansdóttir has combined mud and mirrors in this unusual interactive eco-art exhibit for Morocco. Designed as part of the Marrakech Biennale earlier this year, the earthy installation features pillars of mud and straw organized into a spiral design that is then fronted with mirrors that reflect the exhibit itself and the surroundings.
Now that the kids are back at school, time to go green and continue the celebrations with this back-to-school tutorial. Parents will need to help with this one. This time of year with kids returning to school, many go on shopping spree spending lots of money on branded notebooks, agendas, and bags. But why not […]
Developing a new ecosystem for multi-disciplinary design? Will this need high-end design hub earmark space for sustainable design? If you think Ikea has got the top modern décor, you should check out some of Dror Benshetrit’s designs for products, interiors, architecture, art installations. The studio named after the innovator will be relocated to SoHo this […]