25 Innovative Re-Purposed Home Fittings Designs

Publié le 01 avril 2009 par Jérémy Dumont

It’s a well-known adage that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. But today, with the consumer’s growing eco-conscience, the proverb has taken on new meaning. These are post-modern times, and one person’s scratched CDs maybe very well end up as someone else’s lounge chair. And if you think that you’ve seen the last of that empty wine bottle you tossed into the recycling bin, don’t act too surprised when it’s resurrected as a lamp. The following are 25 examples of household items that have found their way out of the trash bin and into a place of prominence within the home.

Film Lamp
Tom Hanks shone in his role as an astronaut in Apollo 13. Vienna-based artist Michael Marcovici makes him shine again in a hanging lamp he made out of film reel from the movie’s trailer. The film was cut and sewn together using cables.

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Garbage Lamp

Who better than a student to understand that intricacies of a weekend bender? Art student Peter Castelluci came up with the design for the Garbage Lamp, a light solution made from used polystyrene drinking cups.

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Wine Bottle Light Fixture
Put down that bottle of merlot and consider the masterpiece you have in your hand. Jerry Kott, a self-described ‘maker’, made lamps from recycled wine bottle as part of his RE Series which is based on a “rebuild, relive, reinvent, and recycle” philosophy. Kott cut the wine bottles into parts, polished the edges and frosted the glass on the inside and out, and then re-assembled the pieces into hanging light pendants.

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Tail Light
A busted tail light can you get pulled over but it can also give you a creative new light fixture. Artist Stuart Hygarth was inspired by lenses covering vehicle lights, seeing in them something more elevated than banal tail lights. He literally elevates the scrapyard fodder by hanging them from the ceiling and illuminating them with a single fluorescent bulb from within.

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Plastic Utensil Chandelier
Plastic utensils are an eyesore at any park picnic, but their end-use need not be facilitating the passage of your aunt’s potato salad from your plate to your mouth. Student designers from the Black Valley Design Collective collected the disposable flatware and fashioned a chandelier fixture that looks more like a modern crystal creation than the remnants of a backyard barbecue.

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Milk Crate Fixture

Perhaps a milkman’s greatest fantasy, the milk crate fixture is exactly what it sounds like — a bunch of plastic cases glued together with some light bulbs thrown into the mix. It will go well with your Urban Outfitters coat rack and floor cushion.

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Mac Light
When Macs die, their OS-souls go to tech heaven and their mortal users are left as shadows of their former selves, white shell in hand. Resurrect the remains of your beautiful machine by wiring small fluorescent lighting tubes into the MacBook and watch light stream out of the sacred Apple. Steve Jobs doth not forsake.

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Garbage Hanging Lamp
For those household items that seem too good to throw out after they’ve stopped working, Parisian designer Gilles Eichenbaum (also known as Garbage) has come up with a solution. Eichenbaum uses antique kitchen items and turns them into functional works of art. In the photo above, the artist used an old pot as a lampshade. His motto? ‘Your dustbins have talent!’

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Flute Fixture
Make Dom proud by worshipping the vessels of champagne consumption. This glass flute chandelier hung in the window of Gump’s store in San Francisco’s Union Square.

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Bike Rim Light
Remember in college when those sorority girls would hang Christmas lights all around their room? It’s still happening in liberal arts schools all across America. A twist on the cutesy decorating aesthetic of co-eds is to wrap the tiny lights around bicycle rims and hang the creation from the ceiling for a makeshift lighting fixture.

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Bathtub Sofa
Luxuriate in a bathtub without taking your clothes off in Reestore’s Bathtub Chair. The one-of-a-kind pieces are made from vintage cast iron tubs and upholstered in fabric.

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Airplane Trolley Furniture
You don’t need to be on a New York to LA flight to make use of an airplane trolley. The re-purposed conveyers of dull airplane food have found new lives as side tables and book shelves thanks to Bordbar, a company specializing in acquiring and revamping the trolleys. The trolley’s special features include doors that can swing open a full 270 degrees, wheels that lock in place with a magnet, and customizeable design motifs.

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Cassette Cabinet
Mixtapes have long been used to commemorate love (and heartbreak), season changes, irrational obsessions with a band, and life milestones (it’s easier to turn 30 when it’s to the soundtrack of Aretha Franklin). Now that we’re in the compact disc age, you’re stuck with cassette tapes filled with dated music and emotions, but all’s not lost. Creative Barn shows how tapes can serve a more valiant purpose than collecting dust. Made from 918 cassette tapes individually screwed onto a wooden frame, the design house’s cassette tape closet has three doors and expansive storage space inside.

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Tape Cassette Lamp
If you have STILL have cassette tapes left over from the cassette cabinet project, take a clue from Transparent House’s design book. The tape cassette lamp was made by stacking tapes (in their cases) around a light source.

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Truck Spring Stools
If that Ikea stool just isn’t doing it for you anymore, consider making a trek to a local salvage yard for alternate seating solutions. These repurposed stools from Artefact Design & Salvage in Sonoma, California were made from old truck springs.

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Suitcase Chair
These chairs give the idiom ‘living out of a suitcase’ new meaning. This do-it-yourself project literally gives your old suitcases new legs and your visitors, a new place to sit.

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Mattress Chair
Dutch designer Frank Willems uses old mattresses folded over antique chairs and sprays them with water-resistant foam and paint for the pop art look. The pieces are part of the Madam Rubens, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Paul Rubens’ paintings of bosomed maidens.

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727 Jet Lounge Chair

Who doesn’t love the emergency exit seat? You get extra leg room and are the first one out in case of emergency. Motoart designer Facundo Poj’s ‘727 Jet Lounge’ takes it one step further by fashioning a lounger from two Boeing 727 emergency exit doors (one of which is lined with cowhide). According to Poj, some 11,000 passengers have taken a seat beside each door before they became a limited edition $4,500 lounge chair.

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Re-Tyre Chair
Old tires have long been sources of re-purposed fun. You can ride them down a snowy bank, tie them to a tree for a makeshift swing, or outfit a playground with them. Designer Carl Menary’s “Re-Tyre” is a contortion of black rubber meant for sitting rather than burning.

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Plastic Bag Chair
Plastic bags are the pariah of landfills the world over, with their only saving grace being the fact that they’re not a diaper. Artist Ryan Frank’s plastic bag chair was such a hit with art show goers that by the end of its run, the color was rubbing off of the arms.

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Water Bottle Lampshade
By splicing and dicing used water bottles, artist Sarah Turner quenched a thirst and was able to add the lamp to her ReDesign lighting collection. The lampshade design is up for the title of Concept Product of the Year in the UK.

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Half Dollar Butterfly Chair
A few quarters will get you a seat on the bus, but 1,500 of the coins will literally give you a place to sit. This Butterfly Chair by Johnny Swing is comprised of more than 1,500 quarters (that’s about $375 in paper money) that are held together by 7,000 welds.

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Coffin Couch
Rest on what could have been someone else’s permanent resting place. Coffin Couches is a manufacturer of sofas made from 18-gauge steel coffins from SoCal funeral homes that can’t use the caskets for burial because of cosmetic inconsistencies. The six cast iron legs are stamped with a universal biohazard insignia for safety issues — once a human body has been placed in a coffin, it’s considered biohazard tissue.

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CD Chair
Reminiscent of spools of blank CDs, this chair would be any music executive’s worst nightmare. It looks like it provides good lumbar support though.

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DC-6 Cowling Desk
In a previous life, this DC-6 cowling housed Pratt &Whitney engines. Now it houses a different kind of workhorse — the kind that conceivably makes appointments or compiles data. The desk is made by MotoArt, which collects commercial aircraft parts from the deserts in California and Arizona to repurpose into chairs and tables.

source : freshbump

posté par : Floriane PIC

posté sur : création, le blog des créatifs