Every so often, our chest of green gadgets overflows, and we just have to share. This time around, we’ve got reclaimed wood (for paneling and lights), a new Big Ass Fan (that’s not so big), and an awesome exhibit (which offers myriad green gadgets of its own!). See our entire list below.
Pioneer Reclaimed Paneling. Photo: Alexander Severin/Razummedia
1. Pioneer Reclaimed Paneling
Sometimes it’s okay to be run-of-the-mill, especially for Pioneer Millworks. With shops located in Farmington, New York, and McMinnville, Oregon, the company specializes in reclaimed and repurposed wood features that can be utilized structurally or as natural flourishes. Limited edition products, saved from dismantled barns and industrial buildings, can also add earthy accents to modern structural spaces, such as in the EDUN offices in New York City (pictured).
Smart Home. Photo: J.B. Spector
2. Smart Home: Green + Wired
Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry has long been a proponent of modern technological innovation. With interior design by Scout and technology sponsored by Gizmodo.com, the Smart Home: Green + Wired exhibit showcases and contrasts everyday and emerging home technologies, including automation monitors, solar film, wind turbines, Cybertecture mirrors, and modern furniture by Gentner, including its Corliss Chair and Bones Cocktail Table. UPDATE: This exhibit has closed.
Ike Design Group Lighting
3. Ike Design Group Lighting
Bill Orner and Brian Craig had two things: a bright idea and a lot of scrap wood. Originally meant as installations for a Scranton, Pennsylvania, art exhibit, “Hangin’ Lamps” were light fixtures made from reclaimed construction trash. When everything sold on opening night, the duo founded Ike Design Group, which creates rustic lighting fixtures ranging from a $35 night-light made of pallet wood and tin, to a $225 hanging lamp made of reclaimed barn wood. Trash to treasure.
greenscreen Living Walls
4. Greenscreen Living Walls
It’s one thing to bring life to a building. It’s another to make the building itself come alive. Greenscreen’s welded-panel trellising system does both. The panels, available in various structural dimensions, can be utilized as fences, wall screens, columns, or proprietary shapes that can be set up as freestanding landscape structures. They encourage vertical plant growth and promote greenness inside and out.
Haiku Fan
5. Haiku Fan
Taking its inspiration from the Japanese verse form, the Haiku Fan is clean, simple, and highly efficient. Its trademark direct-current Sensorless Drive Technology is 80 percent more energy efficient than conventional alternating-current ceiling fans. Bolstered by an Energy Star rating, the Haiku fan won an international LiveEDGE award for excellence in electronic design. The makers, Big Ass Fans, insist that the three bamboo fan blades be called ‘airfoils,’ though we suspect it’s simply to snatch that extra syllable.
HI-FOG Sprinklers
6. HI-FOG Sprinklers
You never hope to test an in-building sprinkler system, but in case of emergency, you want to be ensured effectiveness and efficiency. Marioff’s precision-machined HI-FOG sprinkler heads come equipped with heat-sensitive glass bulbs designed to burst in response to five progressive levels of increased ambient temperature (134.6 to 285.8 degrees Fahrenheit). They also use 90 percent less water than standard systems and have 300-micrometer strainers in the spray heads to prevent clogging—just in case.
Dow-Knight CI-System
7. Dow-Knight CI-System
It was back in the 1960s that engineers realized separating the weather-bearing and structural elements of a wall made interior systems more efficient and building envelopes tighter. The new CI-System rain screen, offered by Knight Wall Systems and utilizing the patent-pending THERMAX Wall System from Dow, can help reduce long-term energy consumption, enable the use of rigid-foam exterior insulation, and be integrated with weather-resistant barrier systems and fire-performance industry standards. Plus, it doesn’t look half bad.
