Any design team named FridayProject sounds like a fun bunch. FridayProject is the Italian duo of Luca Boscardin and Valentina Raffaelli who are living and working out of Amsterdam. They have some tasty new products launched at SaloneSatellite.

What looks to be a simple bookshelf is actually food storage that gives food the proper amount of space. Instead of throwing everything into your refrigerator, this product allows you to store food with an educational purpose – it’s organized based on the food guide pyramid. Therefore, it gives more space to what we should eat more, and less to other products.

The structure is made on painted steel with a mosaic of materials that correspond to different functions: wooden drawers for bread, pasta and cereals, dark spaces for potatoes and onions, a terracotta box for fresh vegetables, shelves with spaces for eggs, aromatic herbs, spices, etc.

The open structure and the palette of materials, are a way to show and communicate what we have at home, suggesting combination and inspiring recipes. All the products are displayed with a specific sequence and logic, in order to understand immediately how much space we should give to cereals and vegetables instead of cookies and sweets.

It’s a way to bring in the house an educational system for our diet. It’s an instrument to show the food we have at home, and to push people to combine it in an healthy way.

This piece is part of a series of objects, named “graphic furnitures” that they launched during Milan Design Week.

The series also features a lamp named Flamingo. It’s a simple construction and, as the designers explain, “There’s nothing hidden in the construction, it brings to life the spontaneous and colorful intention of a child drawing.”

People is a a set of stools, tables and planters with a simple shape but they have specially-designed feet that look like they’re about to run away. So cute!

Photos by Alessio Campagnaro.

Old denim jeans are hard to part from and often we like to keep them safe inside our wardrobe even if we don’t use them too often. But won’t you like to give a new lease of life to your favorite pair of denims? You can do so easily with a little use of creativity and innovation. Apart from your old favorites, chances are that some jeans do not suit you well anymore or are too old-fashioned for your liking. A good quality pair is a great investment as you can recycle it many times and reuse it in a great many ways.

Five great ideas for reinventing your old denim jeans:

1.     Cool Camera Cosy/Sweet and Small Purse

We all love to take pictures and share them with our friends and family. The love for social networking has increased the love of taking snaps on the move. To carry your camera around, you need a good bag that could protect the lens and keep LCD/LED screen safe from scratches. You can make a cool looking bag using your old denims. You can use a soft material, like cotton, for lining your jeans and making the inner side soft.  You can also make a small yet spacious purse to carry your cash around with the worn denim. They look chic and unique. The hardiness of the jeans as a material makes your cosy or bag last long. All you need are needles, gum guns, stitching thread and some decorations of your choice.

2.     Use your oldies for relieving back pains

You make pads or packs for using in times of body ache from your old jeans. Cut a leg of your jeans into half.  Then stitch one end and fill it with corns or rice. Then stitch the other end of the jeans too. Use the jeans of your kids or younger siblings for small to medium sized hot pack and use full sized jeans for making a bigger pack that you can use in cold days for warming up your bed for a goodnight’s sleep. Such pads are really helpful in relieving different sorts of aches.

3.     Shorts or skirt

Bored of your old black, red, blue, or printed skirt? Renew it with the help of your jeans. Cut your jeans into thin, even and long strips. Then stitch the thin strip at the bottom of your skirt. You can also make small bead embellished squares from your jeans and then sew them around your skirt for giving them a makeover. You can also chop your narrow fit/ slim fit jeans and fold the hemline a bit to make stylish shorts.

4.     Ballet Slippers

A beautiful pair of ballet slippers is the chic accessory you need to add glamour to your outfit while you go on shopping spree with friends or a lazy, casual Sunday brunch. All you need are some fabrics like gingham and cotton, sewing needles, velvet, leather and tiny bit of iron along with the old denim, ready to play a new role.

5.     A Stylish Rug

Make very thin strips from your jeans to weave a rug. You can combine other materials with the shreds of jeans to make your rug look even more stylish.

The definition of ownership is changing. We are becoming less interested in owning products and accumulating wealth through long-term purchases. Instead, we crave experiences, seeking out things without much of a financial or time investment, and have a newfound appreciation of bargains and second-hand possessions (a about thrifting is leading the Billboard charts as I am writing this). We increasingly consume products and services through renting, sharing, and purchasing subscriptions. Being “socially connected” is no longer just about having a lot of people to share your news with; these days, it’s about having a lot of people to share your stuff with--either for free or at a fraction of the market fee. It’s about collaborative consumption.

Last month, The Economist proclaimed that while “on-demand” consumption is still being defined, the fact that it is attracting the “big boys” like manufacturers, regulators, and insurance providers in search of a model that works for them means that it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Collaborative consumption is growing from a trend for the young and urban to a viable alternative for everyone. From renting a movie online (e.g., Netflix) to renting a stranger’s couch (e.g., Couchsurfing), the economy of sharing changes the way we behave, consume, seek new options, and commit to decisions. The phenomenon is not just about getting access to new cars and the latest movies; it’s also about creating a new type of peer-to-peer commerce, making meaningful connections, and establishing a sense of trust among those involved.

The new sharing economy presents unlimited opportunities for us as consumers to reinvent our spending habits. It also poses a number of big challenges for businesses, as it confronts the traditional notion of creating consumer demand for purchases. Businesses will need to reconsider their distribution models that encourage shared ownership, as well as product lines that support multi-user product life cycles.

If collaborative consumption is the commerce of 21st century, how do we support it with 21st-century design catered to the community rather than to individuals?

Most current designs are geared toward individual users and don’t seem to change much for multi-user experiences. Similarly, today’s collaborative consumption model is mostly about how the products are shared, not about how they are designed. How do we bring the two together? Here are a few principles to keep in mind as we navigate the new challenge of collaborative consumption as both consumers and business architects.

1. Identify the right match

That is, which products and services are best suited for collaborative consumption and which are better to be left as to the conventional marketplace? For example, it may seem that size matters; the smaller the product is, the easier it could be passed on to another user. Dig deeper and it’s not true if you consider, for example, shared car services such as Zipcar and Car2Go. Similarly, one may say that digital products are easier to share than physical goods. Again, this doesn’t seem to be the case, with many examples of neighborhood sharing and renting of everything from electrical drills to furniture.

2. Allow for repeat customization

How do we design for recurring customization of a product so that subsequent owners can make the product feel like their own and remove the traces of previous ownership? Software customization is relatively easy: Wipe it out, and it’s ready. How about customization of hardware, beyond changing covers and decals? If a new owner wants to change a particular module or add a peripheral, keeping the otherwise working product, how do we support it? Once again, cars give many examples of re-use and re-customization. But digital products still operate in the throw-away mode once an owner discards a product. There isn’t a sustainable model in place for recycling mobile phones or any other kind of electronics in the same way there is for paper and plastic products.] This makes them much less sustainable than they could have been otherwise.

3. Re-think maintenance to prolong product lifecycle

We tend to look after products we own to prolong their life. When products change hands often, wear-and-tear is a big issue. What are the materials that will make products look new longer? What are the techniques for easy refresh, so that a product is more appealing to new users? How should design of a product change to accommodate new maintenance models? Also, if shared products will tend to live longer, how do we design for easy upgrades of hardware parts?

4. Allow for multi-user scenarios

The previous challenges relate to sequential collaborative consumption where products are passed on from one user to another. However, collaborative consumption also stimulates concurrent usage among different users, such as when multiple users interact with a multitouch surface or similar interfaces. These interactions can also be parallel multitasking, in which multiple users interact with the same device doing different tasks. Consider, for example, a case where one user works on a PC directly while another accesses the machine remotely. Simultasking will reqire a lot of design innovation in order to tackle these collective experiences.

5. Understand that reputation is the new currency

Collaborative consumption creates a new system of credit, for both online and in-person sharing. Online interactions are particularly prone to questions about trust: How can you trust a vendor who isn’t completely traceable. Any bank that lends you money has access to your credit score. By contrast, you need to earn the same kind of trust from each and every online community; your LinkedIn reputation means nothing to Ebay. This ought to change very soon. If we want to support collaborative consumption, UX professionals have a huge role to play in figuring out trust verification and the very nature of online verification.

We may not have all the answers yet on how to design for collaborative consumption, but its potential as a key ingredient in a green economy is clear. The practice supports social sustainability by creating communities of people who want to share what they own and by encouraging trust among those involved. It also supports environmental sustainability by enabling products to live longer, reusing parts and materials, and reducing electronic waste. Now, we just have to figure out how to make it appealing to everyone.

[IMAGE: Sharing via Shutterstock]

Kelly Rakowski/Co.Design (Illustration)

The word “bohemian” comes to mind. The Drawstring Lamp is full of understated cool, a casual conveyance of “oh, I just artfully sewed together this clever shade before you came over!” In reality, it’s a very smart take on a truly friendly eco-friendly lamp. It’s a collaboration that began when Design Stories asked artisan recyclers at Returhuset for some extra fabric.

“We found lots of cuts from amazing sunscreen material originally used for curtains in big glass windows,” explains Design Stories’ Jenny Stefansdotter. “The inspiration for the lamp came from looking closely on the characteristics of the material and what new invention it could be used for.”

As it turns out, that fabric could be used for a lot. When combined with a clever drawstring mechanism, the stiff textile becomes a hand-shapeable form. Yet at the same time, with no solid structural pieces to speak of, the shade can also be flattened and rolled up for quick shipping.

So structurally, it’s a sound, eco-conscious design. But the last step comes in how the fabric deals with bulbs themselves. Why not just leave the bulb totally exposed, I asked the team, wouldn’t that be even more eco-friendly than using any fabric shade at all? Not so when it comes to the color temperature of energy-efficient bulbs. The shade doesn’t just diffuse light; many of the fabrics can actually warm the color temperature.

“The fruity colors of the shade is also an important part because of how it transforms the light from light sources like LED and low-energy bulbs into an atmospheric lighting,” Stefansdotter explains. “The problem I see with many lamps on the market is that they are dependent on an incandescent or halogen lamp to look nice when we really are supposed to use more energy effective bulbs.”

If you are interested in a Drawstring Lamp of your own, you can get in touch with the company for pricing.

Contact them here.

Editors’ note: The following is an excerpt from The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design (Island Press).

Design is shape with purpose.

In recent years, industry has begun to reconsider its purposes. Can products be better for people? Can buildings be better for the planet? Can companies be environmentally responsible and still turn a profit? Addressing these questions is causing dramatic changes in every area of work and life. Yet, as we seek answers to questions about purpose, questions about shape remain. Of the traditional criteria for judging design--cost, performance, and aesthetics--the agenda known as sustainable design is redefining the first two by expanding old standards of value. But what about aesthetics? Does sustainability change the face of design or only its content?

Many designers show little interest in this question, and some dismiss it altogether. “[The term] ‘green’ and sustainability have nothing to do with architecture,” architect Peter Eisenman said in a 2009 interview. Designers care about image, and the green movement, like it or not, has a reputation for being all substance and no style. In 2010, design critic Alice Rawsthorn sized up the Leaf, Nissan’s celebrated electric car: “It is as dull in style as most gas-guzzling clunkers.” Many believe sustainability deals exclusively with energy efficiency, carbon emissions, and material chemistry--issues that belong in a technical manual, not on a napkin sketch. Nuts and bolts are not exactly the stuff of every designer’s dreams. As a result, many consider great design and green design to be separate pursuits, and in fact much of what is touted as “green” is not easy on the eyes. The ugly truth about sustainable design is that much of it is ugly.

Conventional wisdom portrays green as not just occasionally but inevitably unattractive, as if beauty and sustainability were incompatible. “Sustainability and aesthetics in one building?” asked the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007. “Is ‘well-designed green architecture’ an oxymoron?” mused the American Prospect in 2009. The previous year, famed journalist Germaine Greer declared, “The first person to design a gracious zero carbon home will have to be a genius at least as innovative and epoch-making as Brunelleschi,” referring to the Italian Renaissance architect who engineered the magnificent dome of Florence’s Duomo. Green lacks grace, say the critics.

The eco-design movement began with an implied mantra: If it’s not sustainable, it’s not beautiful. Waste spoils taste. Even now, the battle cry continues.

“Look at the architecture of the last 15 years,” architect James Wines complained in 2009. “It’s been more flamboyant and more wasteful than it’s ever been before. To build any of these buildings by Frank Gehry [the architect famous for sculptural structures of crumpled metal], it takes . . . 60 to 80 percent more metal and steel and construction than it would to enclose that space in a normal way . . . Mind-boggling waste.” Wines suggests that the work of Gehry, the most renowned architect of our time, isn’t great design because it’s negligent.

Yet the opposing view insists that focusing exclusively on environmental stewardship is just as irresponsible. “Some of the worst buildings I have seen are done by sustainable architects,” Eisenman said in the aforementioned interview. “‘Sustainable architecture,’” wrote critic Aaron Betsky in 2010, “justifies itself by claiming to be pursuing a higher truth--in this case that of saving the planet. The goal justifies many design crimes, from the relatively minor ones of the production of phenomenally ugly buildings . . . to the creation of spaces and forms that are not particularly good for either the inhabitants or their surroundings.”

In the apparent tug-of-war between sustainability and beauty, which should win? Contract magazine’s 2008 interiors awards jury remarked that the Haworth furniture showroom in Washington, DC, “shows you can create something that’s environmentally sensitive but doesn’t look like it.” In other words, looking green looks bad, so hide it, dress it up. The online design magazine Inhabitat proclaims that designer Yves Béhar’s projects “have always exhibited a deft balance between stunning aesthetics and sustainable design.” Beauty and sustainability need to be balanced, as if designing green requires a compromise or trade-off with looking good. Another Web site refers to “the constant battle between aesthetics and sustainability,” as if the two unavoidably conflict. “A sophisticated building in an environmental sense is not ipso facto a sophisticated building in a design sense,” says architect Eric Owen Moss. “I wouldn’t mix the two.” Environmental sophistication and design sophistication don’t blend well.

Recent surveys confirm how widespread this impression is. In 2010, Vanity Fair asked ninety leading architects to pick the “greatest buildings of the past 30 years.”

Fifty-two people responded, and among the twelve picks with more than a few votes each was a glaring lack of exemplary green projects. (The winner, with nearly three times the number of votes of the second-place choice, was Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain--the epitome of what Wines calls “mind-boggling waste.”) Sustainability, it seems, is not much on the minds of the architectural elite.

To test this theory, I conducted my own poll. For my column in Architect magazine, I asked 150 experts to pick the most important examples of sustainable design from the same period; to be consistent, we published the first fifty-two replies. The differences were dramatic. Not one building from the Vanity Fair list recurred in the top twenty results of my survey, and not a single American architect appeared in both sets of winners. (Of the two architects who did--Italian Renzo Piano and Briton Norman Foster--Vanity Fair featured their older, less environmentally ambitious work.) In fact, none of the winners of the first poll appear anywhere on the entire list of 122 projects in the second. Clearly, standards of design excellence and of environmental performance don’t match, for the “greatest” buildings of our time are far from the “greenest,” and vice versa.

No surprise there. Originally, the concept of sustainability promised to broaden the purpose of contemporary design, specifically by adding ethics to aesthetics, but instead it has virtually replaced aesthetics with ethics by providing clear and compelling standards for one and not the other. The most widely accepted measures for environmental performance exclude basic considerations about image, shape, and form. Even the most ambitious sustainable design can be unattractive because attractiveness isn’t considered essential to sustainability.

But this will change. “It may be true that one has to choose between ethics and aesthetics,” wrote the film director Jean-Luc Godard, “but whichever one chooses, one will always find the other at the end of the road.”

As the green agenda becomes more popular, more designers are realizing that, as Béhar has put it, “virtuous products don’t have to equate with indifferent design.” Over the past handful of years, plenty of striking examples of eco-design have appeared, and suddenly sustainability is sexy. Yet, what makes these designs look good usually has nothing to do with what makes them green. “Sustainability has, or should have, no relationship to style,” insists architect Rafael Viñoly. Fundamental decisions about appearance often are decided by the personal taste of the designers, so when it comes to aesthetics, sustainable design is business as usual.

What if we created a different approach to aesthetics, one based on intelligence and not intuition? Can we be as smart about how things look as we are about how they work? Typical sustainable design strategies stem from painstaking research and time-tested evidence, and this approach can guide both technical choices and aesthetic choices. For every study demonstrating the benefits hidden inside particular materials and production methods, there are other studies showing how certain shapes, patterns, images, colors, or textures can create environmental, social, and economic value. Why aren’t they more familiar to designers?

Although green techniques often seem complicated, actually they could be divided into two simple categories: those you see and those you don’t. INVISIBLE green--considerations such as embodied energy, material sources, chemical content, and so forth--has become a more familiar agenda, partly because these factors are easier to regulate and measure (and possibly because they don’t threaten artistic freedom). Many designers restrict environmental performance to these factors alone; in the words of architect Cesar Pelli, “Sustainability doesn’t necessarily photograph.” But VISIBLE green--form, shape, and image--can have an even greater impact on both conservation and comfort. How a building is shaped can have an enormous effect on how it performs, and some sources estimate that up to 90 percent of a product’s environmental impact is determined during the early design phases, prior to decisions about technical details. In other words, elementary decisions about shape--the “look and feel” of a design--are essential to sustainability.

Love It or Lose It

Aesthetics, or sensory appeal, are not just icing on the cake. In both nature and culture, shape and appearance can directly affect success and survival. From a single cell to the entire planet, much of nature can be explained in terms of geometry alone. The filled donut of a blood cell is perfectly streamlined for fluid dynamics. The slight angle of the earth on its axis creates the four seasons, which have helped shape nearly every living creature. And many of these creatures thrive on being attractive--feathers are colorful, flowers are scented, fruit tastes sweet. Life is alluring, and pleasure drives evolution.

The same applies to design--form affects performance, image influences endurance. A square wheel won’t work, regardless of how well it’s engineered. And even with the most sophisticated mechanical system, a building facing west is going to get hot. So shape affects efficiency but also longevity, which can depend almost completely on visual and emotional appeal. How long will something last if it fails to excite the spirit and stir the imagination? Picture two objects. One uses energy conservatively but is dull, unsightly, or uncomfortable. The other is gorgeous but a glutton for fossil fuels. Which is more likely to endure--the responsible one or the ravishing one?

In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan shows that domesticated plants and animals have thrived because they have an important survival advantage over their competitors in the wild: we like them.

Pollan writes: “Human desires form a part of natural history in the same way the hummingbird’s love of red does, or the ant’s taste for the aphid’s honeydew. I think of them as the human equivalent of nectar.” The fate of many things depends on whether they please people. Wolves might seem heartier than dogs, but there are 50 million dogs in the world and only ten thousand wolves. Which has adapted better? This view of nature may give you pause--should other species exist just to please us? But as a principle for design, it is essential. If you want something to last, make it as lovable as a Labrador.

Because, as studies show, we form positive associations with things we consider beautiful, we are more likely to become emotionally attached, giving them pet names, for instance. We personalize things we care about. Experiments in interaction design also reveal that people generally consider attractive products more functional than they do unsightly ones and therefore are more apt to use them. We prefer using things that look better, even if they aren’t inherently easier to use. Consider the ramifications--if an object is more likely to be used, it’s more likely to continue being used. Who throws out a thing they find functional, beautiful, and valuable all at once? A more attractive design discourages us from abandoning it: if we want it, we won’t waste it.

Long-term value is impossible without sensory appeal, because if design doesn’t inspire, it’s destined to be discarded. “In the end,” writes Senegalese poet Baba Dioum, “we conserve only what we love.” We don’t love something because it’s nontoxic and biodegradable--we love it because it moves the head and the heart. If people don’t want something, it will not last, no matter how thrifty it is. And when our designs end up as litter or landfill, how prudent have we been? “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us,” wrote Rachel Carson half a century ago, “the less taste we shall have for destruction.” When we treasure something, we’re less prone to kill it, so desire fuels preservation. Love it or lose it. In this sense, the old mantra could be replaced by a new one: If it’s not beautiful, it’s not sustainable. Aesthetic attraction is not a superficial concern--it’s an environmental imperative. Beauty could save the planet.

Buy the The Shape of Green for $30 here.

From The Shape of Green by Lance Hosey. Copyright © 2012 Lance Hosey. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.

[IMAGE: Flower Blossoms via Shutterstock]

All too often, the prosthetic knees available for amputees in the developing world are clunky and poorly designed. D-Rev, a Bay Area-based nonprofit that designs products for people living on under $4 per day, recently revealed its latest attempt at creating an affordable knee that amputees actually want to wear. That’s because the knee was built with heavy input from its users.

The ReMotion Knee, D-Rev’s first product (we wrote about the second product, Brilliance, in our profile of the company), came into existence when India’s Jaipur Foot Clinic--an organization that provides free limbs and crutches to the disabled-- approached a Stanford University class about building a better knee.

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The “carDboard” concept vehicle is a militantly minimal coupe with no door, no dashboard, no hard roof, & it only comes in one color (so you’d better like brown!). The chassis & body are composed of entirely of recycled cardboard & plastic, making it extremely lightweight & efficient with its small tri-hybrid gas/compressed-air/electric engine. Its projected top speed would reach somewhere around 70MPH, but it’s better suited for just a quick zip around town. Just try to avoid rain & puddles!

Designer: Thierry Dumaine

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(Introducing, the disposable car! was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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April is over now, but we didn’t really get all that many showers, so maybe we’re due for lots of rain in May. reCOVER by Teracrea is a re-imagining of the typical coat stand into a miniature ecosystem. The base of the stand can be placed into any planter, so that your raincoats and drippy umbrellas can nourish the plant.

What do you think of this design? Would you use it?

Inspired by children’s stacking games, Varia by Gaia Bottari is a set of tableware perfect for those who can’t make up their mind. Modular in nature, and just like a game, the pieces that make up Varia can be mixed and matched.

If you get bored, you can always switch it up. Made of marble, wood, plastic and cork, Varia’s pieces are designed to be defined by the user.