Good quality, local materials, and economical production, make up modern-day criteria for sustainable design. In the 1930’s, the beloved Finnish architect and designer, Alvar Aalto was just applying a common-sense approach to his company and their designs. Along with his wife, Aino, Aalto founded Artek in 1935. They harvested birch from nearby forests and have used the same process to produce their furniture as they did nearly 80 years ago. What’s most impressive is that many of Aalto’s designs are still in production and Artek’s new management are purchasing vintage Artek pieces (called 2nd Cycle), such as their iconic birch stools, and reselling them to the public; the dirtier the better. They hope to make an environmental statement about conscious consuming and authentic design.
When making furniture purchases, Joe and I often have one criteria in mind, would this be something we could hand down to our children? Don’t get me wrong, we have spent serious money at Ikea but we’re making every effort to limit the amount of things we consume to stuff that will last, at least our lifetime. It’s inspiring to read that Artek is making the effort to recirculate vintage pieces and likely make a nice profit by doing so.
Source: NYTimes
photos courtesy of: From left, Henrik Duncker; Matti Pyykko; Henrik Duncker; Marco Melander. Below,
Is this blog broken? I can’t get this blog to to show me any new stories. This blog must be broke.
Sure wish it would get fixed. This blog is officially part of my new regimen of time wasters throughout the day. I checked 5 times yesterday to see if was unbroken. Nope still broke.
Seems like the operators of this blog have better things to do…like put together a house.
But what about me?
What’s with this blog? I keep checking for new posts, but nothing… Must be broken… I’l check back in 5 minutes ad see if there is a new post… I thought that blogs always have a new post every time you open them, isn’t that like RRS or something? Anyway, I’m a big fan, love the blog… At least this blog has more frequent posts than that lame cookwithpan.com
Oh man. I didn’t realize there was so much demand for h&f posts. Don’t fret. We’ll have something up today and I’ll commit to two this wkd and from here on out we won’t miss an entire week again (unless we move, of course). :-)
Biggestphan, I’m with you. It’s super lame that cookwithpan.com never has new episodes. What’s up with that guy?
I have it on good account that the Pan is sitting in some blue warm up pants right now with a hoody on and he is thinking of great show ideas.
When i wave the “Pan Thinker Scanner” over the Pan’s head it now says the Pan thinks the H&F blog is fixed and he is thinking about fixing his own blog very soon, but he’s wondering if H&F people know of a good blog mechanic.”