brastilo

Superuse, the superhero of eco-design

Bored by staid design?  Tired of wasting useful resources on stupid things?  Have more trash than you know what to do with?  Superuse to the rescue (cue superhero music)!  It's described as an "online community of designers, architects and everybody else who is interested in inventive ways of recycling."  Truly amazing.  This site highlights just how important eco-friendly design has become to consumers and designers.  And some of the designs featured definitely require superhero strength. 

Quite possibly the coolest thing I've seen thus far on Superuse is a woman who recycled a defunct plane and made it her home. Look at the image - hanging amidst the trees.

via Superuse

It's truly a sight to behold and a great way to make use of something that would otherwise make a ton of waste.  And, to top it off, it cost a lot less than a typical house!

Superuse also links to a site called Airport Journals which has a whole article about planes that have been recycled into homes.  It's funny, it seems so bizarre.  But with the Dreamliner in the air and AirForce One decked out with beds and a press corps, is it that hard to imagine retrofitting a plane for your home?  I can totally picture the interior of my old Pan Am - mod wallpaper, the Brastilo Swivel Arm Chair, and, my absolute favorite piece, the Brastilo Bench with Moveable Tray.  Of course, there would have to be a disco ball and a lava lamp too. 

But seriously, all hippie/disco fantasies aside, we are obsessed with inventive ways of recycling.  And we love finding new inspiration for our designs, our philosophies, and our own personal lives.  We already sell 2 pieces that are made from recycled goods - the Blue Paper Bowl made of recycled newspapers and the Banana Leaf Hanging Leap made out of banana leaves.  But the possibilities, as Superuse has proven, are endless - and we love the challenge.

So go forth and inventively recycle!

Via VSL

Playing with the mobius strip

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve hopefully come away with the insight that good design is fun, be it furniture, aircrafts, fashion, or simply a great Web site.  Brastilo is a big proponent of good design that’s fun.  We like to think (and hopefully you agree) that our furniture adds a sense of playfulness to a room.  I’m particularly thinking of the staggered shelf bookcase and the hidden drawer side table.  And, our accessories are really fun too.  You all know how much I love our hand-carved monkey head.  So, as you can see, furniture design at Brastilo strives to be fun.

But, in all fairness to Brastilo’s fun design, nothing is quite as fun as a playground.  I adore playgrounds.  I love the running, the jumping, the screaming at the top of your lungs.  I love the turny things, and the climby things, and the other whoozawhatsists that have no known names but are oodles of fun to play around in.  I remember one playground by my house that was, literally, the best playground ever.  It had a tower you climbed up to and 2 slides, one which led to a rope bridge you’d fumble across which ended in some sort of jungle gym type climbing mechanism.  At any rate, this thing was amazing. 

So you can imagine my utter joy when I came across the following playground.  Admittedly, it might be a bit beyond a four year old’s intellect, but it is so cool.  It’s a playground designed in the shape of a mobius strip. 
via Landscape Structures

And for those of you who can’t remember what that is, myself included, Wikipedia calls it:  “a surface with only one side and only one boundary component.”  I really just remember it from that Escher sketch with the ants.
image via Physlink

But seriously folks, this thing is amazing.  It’s rock climbing.  It’s sliding down poles.  It’s racing your annoying older sister and finally beating her to the finish line because you are the true goddess of mobius climbing.  It’s your parents explaining to you at a young age the complicated math behind this thing (which, in all honesty, I’m still not sure I totally grasp).  It’s educational.  It’s physical.  It’s fantastic! 

All these wonderful benefits for children aside, one of the main reasons I love this playground is because it’s actually attractive.  Unlike those yellow and blue plastic playsets you see nowadays, this thing has style.  It has class.  And I wouldn’t hate it if it were sitting in my backyard.  And that, dear readers, is the beauty of good design.  It’s functional, playful, and attractive. 

Hats off to the fellas at Landscape Structures for creating this wonderful toy.

Vote for Rio!

I remember waking my poor father up every Sunday morning at about 6am, begging him to play a boardgame with me.  I had a few favorites, some quicker than others.  And I could always tell just how adorable I must have been, grinning at his bedside, when he smiled and exuded patience at the thought of having to play an early morning game of Monopoly when he could be sleeping (or at least otherwise go back to sleep in 30 or so minutes).  Monopoly was great for me - I loved the little toys that you could use to designate yourself on the board.  I reveled in the Community Chest and Chance cards, eagerly awaiting my "Get Out of Jail Free" card, laughing hysterically at my father whenever he landed in jail and he had to pay me $50 for my free pass out.  It also meant HOURS of alone time with my father.  He must have loved me quite a bit to put up with me that early in the morning on a weekend!

And while, to this day, I love Monopoly, I still don't get the board.  Where is Connecticut Avenue?  Baltic Avenue?  What is the B&O Railroad?  I thought that was like the first railroad ever built in this country.  Is it even still around? Why is Park Place $500?! And why, dear Parker Brothers, do I always get saddled with the light blues and never the greens? 

That last question aside, we can all finally know a little more about the geography of the Monopoly board.  Parker Brothers is creating a world edition of Monopoly, and you have, at the time of writing this, exactly 2 days and 10 hours to cast your vote for our favorite city, Rio de Janeiro, to make it onto the board.  After all these years, we'll finally understand that darned Monopoly board!!!

This blog has touted the beauty and culture of Rio and, if we've done our jobs right, you're about to run right over and vote vote vote!  To remind you, we've talked about the amazing Sugarloaf Mountain and the beautiful designs of the Portuguese Mosaics, the welcoming Lapa Staircase, the beauty of Ipanema, and the overall free spirit that pervades Rio, "carioca".  We love Rio, and we want the world to love Rio too.  That's why it's so important for us to get Rio into the eyes of the millions of people who will play this game, the children who will dream of visiting Rio (which will no doubt be at least where the yellow squares are, if not the green, on the Monopoly board), and the parents who desperately need a vacation from their annoying children who wake them up on Sunday mornings to play Monopoly, Here & Now: World Edition (sorry Dad)!  We want to bring Rio into the livelihoods of America and the World, because Rio is truly an astounding city. 

If this hasn't sold you, well, I guess you'll have to vote for some over-traveled European city.  Sigh.

Vote for Rio to make it on the Monopoly board here.

Birdhouse with a soul

I remember being in elementary school, pasting those giant-sized popsicle sticks, the ones that seem to make up every craft project, together to create a birdhouse.  I remember bringing it home to my mother, proud as can be, and her taking one look at it and relegating it to a dark corner of my room, where not even I would be forced to look at it, let alone a bird.  Okay, so, I'm no Oscar Niemeyer.

Well now, I can be proud to bring home a birdhouse for my mother, only this one I'll have to buy (I think we can all acknowledge it's probably better that way!).  German design shop Raumhochrosen created gorgeous modernist birdhouses, based on several famous architectural masterpieces located in the remote Vorarlberg state of Austria.  There is a strong architectural history in Vorarlberg, an isolated state where the residents actually speak a dialect closer to Alsatian or Swiss than Austrian (don't say I didn't teach you anything!). 

These birdhouses are 1:33 scale replicas of actual houses, made using the same wood as the originals. 

And, in a sort of idealistic fashion, the architects of these birdhouses believe that children gravitate towards birdhouses at a young age and, in using these modernist replicas, these same children will then grow up with a greater appreciation for modernist architecture.

This is precisely the sort of thing that jazzes us up here at Brastilo.  It's not just that these birdhouses are contemporary, modern, different, and interesting, but the ideas behind the design - the idea that something as simple as a modernist birdhouse can change a perception.  That's what good design is all about, and it's something we hope we can achieve with what we sell.

But, in all honesty, these birdhouses are just really cool.  I sincerely hope those bluejays appreciate the beauty of what they're going to be eating from.

Via swissmiss/Notcot