Hardly child's play

While we normally focus solely on commercial design, we couldn't pass this by: The PBS show Design Squad recently held a competition called Trash to Treasure. Co-sponsored by Intel, the competition challenged kids to design entirely new products from discarded items and materials. The entries had to move things or people, protect the environment, or be played with inside or outdoors. 

Here's the part us social responsibility nuts love: The winner was 12-year-old Max Wallack, who crafted The Home Dome, temporary housing for those in need of shelter, out of packing peanuts and plastic bags. The dome is anchored by a built-in bed that uses the weight of the dome's occupant to anchor the structure. 

Even more fun, as part of his prize, he got a trip to the Newton, Mass. offices of Continuum (the minds behind a bevy of products, including Allsteel's Acuity Chair), to build a prototype. Check it out:

Are you Earth-minded? We've got a competition for you...

ASID and Contract's sister magazine Hospitality Design have extended the deadline for the annual Earth-Minded Awards (EMAs) to March 15. The awards will recognize exceptional sustainable design and this year's competition also includes a new category: the Earth-minded award for tomorrow. 

Projects and products are eligible, but only completed projects and manufactured products will be considered. Entries should be environmentally sensitive, innovative, aesthetically pleasing, promote sustainability, gone through a careful materials selection process, integrate efficiency, and incorporate recycling and waste management.

Interested? Check out the full guidelines and entry form at HDmag.com. You'll need a completed form, project/product description under 1,000 words, and entry fee, along with photos and floor plans or product samples. Entries by mail go to Jana Schiowitz at Hospitality Design; 770 Broadway, 7th Floor; New York, NY 10003. Electronic entries go to Korenna Cline: kcline [at] asid.org.

Winners will be announced at HD Green Day in Las Vegas on May 13.

Science + Design

I've a confession from my inner-nerd. When I'm at the airport and browsing through the offerings at Hudson News, while most people's in-air guilty pleasure reading tends to lean toward, say, In Touch or Star magazine, I usually find myself ending up with a copy of SEED magazine, which is odd considering I am not a science buff. I do, however, find the intersection of science and design to be a more useful tool for keeping myself awake on flights. And so, I share this food for thought: SEED magazine has just posted The Seed Design Series, a collection of videos from the magazine's science and design conference held in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art, where a selection of speakers explored, among other things, the intersection between science and design and architecture. Click through to see the full roster.

Chicago reminder: Take your business to the next level....tomorrow

A reminder for our Chicago-based readers: Tomorrow ASID's Illinois chapter (ASID-IL) is hosting its fifth annual Design Summit: Taking Your Business to the Next Level. The one-day conference is taking place on the 8th floor of the Merchandise Mart from 8 am - 3 pm.

The event is open to designers, students, and vendors in the interior design industry and features speakers, career building, networking, and educational sessions. The breakdown is:

Morning keynote: 8 - 9 am

Mitchell S. Chaban, J.D., B.S., Levin Ginsburg, Ltd.

Business Law Essentials for Interior Designers

Afternoon keynote: 12:30 - 2 pm

Carmen K. Iezzi, Fair Trade Federation

Great Products, Tremendous Impact: An Introduction to Fair Trade

Seminars:

10 - 11 am

Rick Gilman, CPA, CITP, Partner at Virchow, Krause & Company

Successfully Integrate Your Front and Back Office

10 -11 am

Jim Stockstill, Hansgrohe

The Bathroom Through the Ages

11 am - Noon

Jim Accetta, MS, CPCC, Certified Trainer-Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Truly Human Coaching

Instant Rapport: Building Rapport in 60 Seconds or Less

11 a.m. - Noon

Joanna Mineau, Page 1 PR, Jan Parr, editor of Chicago HOME + Garden magazine and a local photographer specializing in interiors.

Launch a PR & Marketing Campaign in 2009: Get started, get noticed and get the media's attention

2 - 3 pm

Mary Hoffman, Color & Design Specialist, Benjamin Moore

Color Pulse 2010

2 - 3 pm

Joan Kaufman, ASID, IIDA, FSII - Registered Interior Designer, ASID Illinois Chapter President-Elect, Interior Planning & Design, Inc.

From Backpack to Briefcase: Reaching the Summit of Design

There's also an expo where vendors will showcase their latest products and services, and a number of them will host demonstrations in their booths throughout the day. A complete list of vendors is online.

Registration begins at 8 am.  The Expo floor and Summit runs from 10 am - 3 pm. The Design Summit is $50 for ASID and IIDA design members (includes seminars, lunch, Expo); $75 for non-members; and $25 students with identification (includes seminars, lunch, Expo). There is no charge to visit the Expo only.

Speaking of green

While we're on the subject of sustainability, if you weren't able to make it up to Toronto for IIDEX this past September and regret missing Michael Braungart's keynote speech, good news: It's now online. Click here for the full video.

Greenwashing green jobs?

Joel Makower's got an interesting post on both his blog, Two Steps Forward, and also reprinted on World Changing this week regarding the ever-increasing buzz on green jobs, which caught my eye this morning. We're constantly talking green here at Contract and the as the buildling word-of-mouth on green-collar jobs across the media and political spectrums has me thinking: what, exactly, is a green job? What's more, how can we tell if a job is, indeed, really green? 

As Makower notes, Global Insight defines a green job as this:

Any activity that generates electricity using renewable or nuclear fuels, agriculture jobs supplying corn or soy for transportation fuel, manufacturing jobs producing goods used in renewable power generation, equipment dealers and wholesalers specializing in renewable energy or energy-efficiency products, construction and installation of energy and pollution management systems, government administration of environmental programs, and supporting jobs in the engineering, legal, research, and consulting fields.

But, Makower points out: 

That's a start, but hardly complete. Aside from some potentially too-narrow definitions (what about jobs creating transportation fuel from agricultural waste or municipal trash?) there are other job types worth considering. Should the truck driver who delivers wind turbine parts to a wind farm qualify as a green job? What about an architect or developer of green buildings? Or an auto worker who last year was making SUVs and this year is making hybrids or electric cars? 

His argument is quite interesting and i recommend reading it through. Then, come back here and join the discussion. I want to know: What do you consider a green job? Should there be a system like, say, LEED, that ranks the sustainability involved in a job? How should we evaluate this new focus on green?

Last chance!

Attention all socially responsible designers: This week is your last chance to enter our inaugural Contract Inspirations competition. The deadline (although it reads Feb 27 above) is now MARCH 4! Sponsored by Tandus, the awards will recognize commitment in the built and unbuilt environments that further global efforts for social responsibility. How have you used your design skills to improve the quality of life for those in need? 

Top honors will each receive a $5,000 grant to the cause their inspirational work supported. And judging the entries is an esteemed panel comprised of Prataap Patrose, director of urban design for the Boston Redevelopment Authority; John Cary, executive director of Public Architecture and one of Contract's 2009 Designers of the Year; and Trisha Wilson, president and CEO of Wilson & Associates.

Winners will be recognized in print, online, and in person at a special event in Los Angeles on March 25. 

For entry details, click here.

The end of the office?

Are we seeing the final days of the traditional American office? Yes, says DEGW co-founder and British architect Frank Duffy in the current issue of Harvard Design magazine. Specifically, Duffy argues that the tall and low office buildings prevalent in the 20th century will no longer rule the skyline in response to a number of factors. One of the most important variables? The continual rise and evolution of technology. New technology, Duffy states, has created new ways of working and, in response, new office architecture and city forms. "There is now less need for individual desk-centered space and more need for widely distributed spaces of formal and informal gathering," he writes, and goes on to add that "it is no longer useful to rely on temporal categories such as the five-day week and the eight-hour day to place boundaries on office work or measure the environmental performance of buildings. Boundaries between what is work and what is not are shifting fast. Work is spilling into even wider and more complex spatial and temporal landscapes. The consequence for architects and for everyone else involved is that the office building no longer has a monopoly on accommodating work, and thus, from both a managerial and an environmental point of view, has become a misleading and obsolescent unit of analysis."

To read more on Duffy's thoughts, click here.

Last call

For many, this weekend is the last chance to get to a theater to take in all the Oscar contenders, but ArchNewsNow gave us the heads up on a film that seems just as intriguing as Hollywood's top offerings right now:

"Last Call for Planet Earth" gathers 12 architects from around the world to share their visions about sustainability and architecture. The roster of participants: Thom Mayne, Francoise-Helene Jourda, Christoph Ingenhoven, Kengo Kuma, Daniel Pearl, Georg W. Reinberg, Markku Komonen, Jaime Lerner, Ivan Harbour, Qingyun Ma, Massimiliano Fuksas, and Jo Crepain.

Have you seen it? What did you think?

Curvy Corian Eye Candy

Speaking of fashion, here's more eye candy: Vertebrae, a couch crafted from DuPont Corian that also featured embedded lights, that made its debut at the Interior Design Show in Toronto. The sculptural creation was devised by Bregman + Hamann Architects (B+H) using 3-D digital tools. How's it done? Each section of Corian is attached to the others by flexible joints, creating the curvaceous final form.