striking an Accord part 2...

A couple of posts ago we had a week of events and visits which was very nice indeed. One of these visits was to the first ever UK Town Hall meet up of the Designers Accord, run with the assistance of the University of Brighton and the Sustainable Design MA students.

So - what actually is the Designers Accord?

well - as quoted on the main Designers Accord website, here is the foundation of the group:

In late June 2007, the Designers Accord was founded with the goal of changing the way the creative community does business. Designers, educators, and business leaders adopted a “Kyoto Treaty” of design (later renamed the Designers Accord) that specified a particular ethos and behavior around sustainable design. The underlying philosophy of this agreement was that by collectively building our intelligence around issues of climate change and humanitarian issues – and tackling those challenges with optimism and creativity – we would catalyze innovative and sustainable problem solving throughout the creative community.

Makes perfect sense to me. As a fully committed subscriber to the 'sustainability in design is the only was forward' movement, this is what I live and breathe. This is why I design and how I design.

Since that time, the Designers Accord has grown massively, with individuals committing to becoming a supporter, organisations committing to becoming and endorser and design firms committing to becoming Adopters. After seeing first hand the energy passed around the group at the first UK meeting, I was keen to sign up the studio to the Designers Accord as an official Adopter. And I am glad to say that we were approved.

So what exactly have we adopted? Well - we have committed to follow the follow Designers Code:

Guidelines for Design Firm Adopters

1. Publicly declare participation in the Designers Accord.


2. Initiate a dialogue about environmental and social impact and sustainable alternatives with each and every client. Rework client contracts to favor environmentally and socially responsible design and work processes. Provide strategic and material alternatives for sustainable design


3. Undertake a program to educate your teams about sustainability and sustainable design


4. Consider your ethical footprint. Understand the environmental impact of your firm, and work to measure, manage, and reduce it on an annual basis.


5. Advance the understanding of environmental and social issues from a design perspective by actively contributing to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design.

This is what we try and do at all times, and have done since the inception of the practice in 2008, that is, all apart from number one, which is what we are starting here.

you can view our official adopters listing here along with the other adopters around the world.

As an individual our influence can be small, but as a collective, the possibilities are endless.

Watch this space for further news on the Brighton group and our other Designers Accord activities...

the truest ever Farm Shop...?

In January I spoke about my predicted trends for 2011, and I mentioned that urban farming was still looming on the horizon, but was probably not quite here just yet.

Well, I hope to be proven wrong this year by eco design trio Something and Sons when they fully launch their FARM:shop in Dalston, London.

The concept is simple - produce as much food as you can, by farming within the confines of the shop. But as you can imagine, this is far from simple and requires a great deal of advanced technological expertise to support the basic farming techniques.

But I love the concept - Aquaponic micro fish farming (where the waste water feeds into the tomatoes), a polytunnel and indoor allotment. A rooftop chicken coop ensures that foxes are kept at bay, and the happy (and hopefully partially sheltered) chickens will provide eggs for the shop below.

We have all seen a myriad of urban farming renderings, with the skylines of our cities paved over with crops, or huge multi-layered skyscrapers filled with levels of agriculture, but not many have got very close to (pardon the pun) actual fruition, so it will be very interesting to see how the FARM:shop concept actually works in real time, and how it could be replicated to our own high streets.

Would it just be too small, or would it just cater for a niche market (like fresh tilapia and pots of specialist herbs) or, as was pointed out quite aptly on the latest edition of The People's Supermarket, have we just become conditioned to thinking that rafter packed supermarkets and lines and lines of choice (and therefore waste) are what we want to consume?

I tend to agree with the latter - I would rather wander into a shop and see what is there, in season and looking good rather than going with a mind of preconceived recipes and a list to match.

Oh, and I love the slogan for Something and Son - Between us we know enough about everything to have a go at (almost) anything.

I quite agree, and we try and work the same way.

chocolate, beetroot and raspberry cake...

the last of the January posts, in true spirit of the studio, is to ditch the diet and eat vegetable cake.

so - as promised for an age - here is the ecospot chocolate, beetroot and raspberry cake recipe...

Ingredients:

350g beetroots (weighed before grating!)

2 large (organic and free range) eggs

150g golden caster sugar

125ml vegetable oil

200g self raising flour

35g cocoa

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

filling:

homemade or a good quality raspberry jam

icing:

125g butter

125g icing sugar

1 tbsp raspberry jam (or natural raspberry extract)

natural pink food colouring (usually made from concentrated beetroot as well!)

make it:

preheat the oven to 180 degrees C or gas mark 4.

peel and grate the beetroots and place in a colander to drain.

place the oil, eggs and sugar into a large bowl and mix thoroughly until light and fluffy.

add the flour, cocoa, bicarb and baking powder and mix again until combined.

the mixture will look rather scant and thick at this point - do not worry - now add the grated (and drained) beetroot and mix to create a lovely, gloopy and combined cake batter.

(variation - you can add some spices as well if you like - chilli goes quite nice... add 1tsp cayenne or similar, or to taste)

bake it:

place into two non-stick loose bottomed 8 - 9 inch round cake tins and bake in the preheated oven for 30 mins. (or place into muffin cases and bake for around 24 mins)

assemble it:

when done, remove from oven and let the cakes cool on a wire rack.

when completely cooled, sandwich the two rounds together with a nice layer of raspberry jam and sit to one side.

make the icing by combining the sifted and lump free icing sugar with the softened butter until smooth.

stir in the raspberry jam (or if using, 1tsp natural raspberry extract) and add drops of natural pink food colouring to the icing - mixing until your desired shade of pink is achieved.

cover the top of the cake with the icing and sprinkle on any other decorations (we usually add little chocolate stars or dried raspberry pieces)

EAT! safe in the knowledge you are not eating cake, you are eating vegetables...

the people's supermarket...

Staying with the foodie theme from my last post, I thought I would talk a little about what could be the future of shopping.

Independant shops? Hopefully. Farmers Markets? I should hope so. Growing your own? Practical for some, but not others. Urban farms? They are coming, but not just yet.

So, what could be the immediate future from our food shopping experiences?

Supermarkets.

Yep. You heard me right. Supermarkets, but not as we know it.

We have become conditioned to shop for everything at one place - cramming our little cages on wheels with essentials every week before we drive home to consume (or throw away...but that is another post). The supermarket is just the way most of us do our shopping. Fact.

Even though many of us try to grow our own, support our local producers and frequent our farmers markets, many of us still use the supermarket model as our main shopping experience.

So if you can't beat the supermarkets, why not join them.

And this is what a few enterprising souls have begun.

Park Slope in New York is a 25yr old co-operative with around 6000 members, who give up 2hrs 45mins per month to work in the supermarket (cashier, cleaner, shelf replenishment etc) in return for wonderfully sourced, local, often organic produce at hugely reduced rates. With (little) wages to pay, the community are actively pocketing the mark-up savings in the lower prices available. If you do not do your shift, you have to make up with double the time next shift, and if you continue to flaunt the rules, sorry, you are out.

This can sound a little harsh, but this kind of model can ONLY work with full communication and trust between all members. Sounds great to me.

It also looked great to Arthur Potts Dawson (who also set up the London eco restaurant Acorn House), who has taken this seed idea and translated it into London's first version of the American model, in Holborn, called The People's Supermarket.

The basic premise is the same - pay your £25 membership, sign up to your 4 hour shift and you are a member - AND part owner - of the People's Supermarket. This entitles you to hugely reduced core produce (large lovely loaf £1.85 to 'regular' shoppers, £1 to members) and 10% reduction on your overall bill.

But being a part owner of the supermarket also means that you are entitled to a say in what is stocked, where from, and how the whole kit and caboodle is run. An ideal situation really - cheaper stuff, a nod to the 'big society' and a say in keeping that local raspberry yoghurt you have come to love as well as the larger decisions.

Not everyone will like the idea of working four hours to qualify for the benefits, but (having worked for a big supermarket to pay my way through university) it can be fun.

And in a time of gloom, surely a few more pennies in the bank, a few more local bits in your belly and a few new friends in your phone can only be a good thing?

back into the Wilderness...

Seasonal shorts number...1 - the tree...

Now we are officially on the countdown to Yule /Christmas, there will be a veritable flurry of blogs - one each day, looking at a whole raft of seasonal greening up. Today is the first - the tree...

I am a big one for tradition, and there is a very seasonal tradition in our lives that is undertaken, each year, usually split between the months of both November and December.

On the first of November (or the closest Sunday to it anyway) we choose it, and in the middle of December, we go and dig it up.

Yep - I have blogged about it before here, and here, and this is the tradition of choosing and subsequently collecting our annual fir tree, which is always, without fail, collected from the truly wonderful Wilderness Wood in Hadlow Down, Sussex.

We always have a Douglas Fir, which has beautifully fine, fluffy and fragrant needles, and we always have Sussex tea and gooseberry conserve and elderflower cordial cake (or ginger cake) when we both choose him and collect him.

If we are feeling extravagant, we also have an organic sausage from the outdoor barbeque.

I love it, and if you are in Sussex you MUST consider doing this next year.

You can read all about the wood (which you can of course visit all year round) here.

to 'critical reclaim'...

Well - we have finally done it.

It has taken an age to do so, and if anything, the snow finally gave us a chance to get to grips with and set up the studio shop.

That's right ladies and gents - we now have our Ebay shop online!

'critical reclaim' will feature all the studio designed bits and pieces, including our limited editions and one off pieces along with the very best in interesting and beautiful reclaimed and salvaged items we find on our travels, from vintage furniture to lighting, industrial stuff to random stuff.

Our teacup bird feeders are online now, (as posted previously) and we will be adding more items over the next few days, so keep your beady eyes open!

you daily eco read...

The wonderous thing about the internet is that you can find so many fantastic eco bits and bobs - news, products, general stuff.

But, the hardest thing is finding time to find it all.

So now you don't have to. We have done it for you.

You can now read the 'claire potter design guide to eco design daily' - our NEW and pretty damn good online paperless paper which rounds up the best eco stories of the day from one of the studio's Twitter lists.

Read it and subscribe for free here...

teacups now online!

yep folks. it is getting to be THAT time of year once more.

here in Brighton we have already had the city lights up for a while, along with a smattering of trees and 'seasonal decorations.'

I have to admit - I have even started to do my own seasonal shopping...

so, with this in mind, we thought it was about time we got our online shop up and running to make it easier for those of you who like to do your eco shopping from the comfort of your own home.

and the first to be online?

well - our best selling reclaimed teacup birdfeeders...

more to follow soon!

and if you like that...

as a follow up to our video about White Night (which you can view below), we now have our very own YouTube Channel, where you can see our past videos and a whole series of new ones which we will be working on regularly from now on.

well, if by regular we mean around one a month. sometimes more.

there will be eco bits, stuff of interest and stuff we are doing, so quite a varied bag.

follow this link to get there now - we will let you know when new bits transpire.

http://www.youtube.com/user/clairepotterdesign

Micro chic, eco style!!!

Just a little link really - here is the fantastic article that has just been published in the September edition of the Wealden Times - all about our wee house - Farrier Cottage.

enjoy.

staycation memoirs...

just like a holiday, we blinked and it was over - but we are delighted to announce that our studio staycation was a great success!

over the five open days we spoke to nearly 100 different people, who had a variety of queries from which herbs to plant on a semi-shady balcony to what types of natural insulation are available.

we helped people with natural rubber flooring, colour selection and clematis species.

we had a blast.

so much so, that we are planning on starting a new 'free friday' scheme in Brighton - setting up free design clinics an a variety of locations, one every two months, to help whoever wants to come and say hi!

further details will follow, but thank you to all of our visitors at our very first 'staycation'...

postcards from the staycation...

busy, busy, busy.day one - advice given on herbs for a semi-shade bal

cony, the use of social media and a whole house interior scheme.

more to come, so here are a few pics of our reclaimed space...

studio staycation (part 2...)

ooh - we have now got our flyer for our staycation sorted - click for a bigger pic!

ps - we have just added the back, which is useful - showing how to find us!

pop-up studio 'staycation'...

we are not going on holiday this year.

instead, we are decamping from our base in Portslade and creating an eclectic little pop-up studio in Brighton - offering free advice to all visitors for one week only!

situated in a unit in the Brighton Open Market in London Road, the temporary studio will be made from a whole load of reclaimed and recycled bits and pieces and will be our part of the residency with the wonderful compARTment group.

private or business, large or small, pop along and say hello and pick our brains, or send us an email (hello@clairepotterdesign.com) to pre-book your ***free*** consultation with one of the team...

(Tues 24th - Sat 28th August, about 10 - 5 ish every day...)

giving paint a newlife...

I love my job.

I get to meet some really interesting people and specify some fantastic stuff to create some brilliant spaces. Wednesday was no exception as I had a mid week jaunt to the base of a very interesting paint company.

Many of you would have seen me (or heard me) talking about organic, low VOC, natural etc paint, but I have never talked about, or indeed found, recycled paint.

Not quite an alien concept as it sounds, there are groups which collect the waste remnants of paint that have been taken to recycling points at refuse collection sites across the UK and pass them onto charities through various community repaint projects.

But even with these sterling efforts, approximately 50 million litres of paint end up in landfill every year.

Step in Newlife paints.

They take all the recycled paints in (via the aforementioned recycling points), stack the cans into colour batches, then remix them in large blue containers to create a whole new batch of paint. This is then filtered, processed and repackaged for use as brand new paint.

As well as their standard 20 colours, they are also able to colour match paint to the customers requirements - all using paint which would otherwise be festering in landfill.

We think they are doing a sterling job with a real problem waste product - this really is upcycling at its best!

go check them out here...

STOP PRESS....... Just heard from Amy that Newlife Paints were awarded the Best Recycled Product 2010 at yesterdays National Recycling Awards - Well done Newlife!

compARTments and MESH...

After my little sneaky peek post yesterday and my telling off for being soooo unfair, I have decided to reveal a little more about what we are doing and have done recently in the studio. It is not ground breaking, but we have been and continue to be excited by the below. Hopefully you will too...

First up - the University of Sussex Product Design Degree Show - you may remember from a couple of posts ago that we had made, and were sponsoring an award and were hot footing it up to Falmer to bestow the 'best eco design' award onto one of the very deserving students.

Well, the winner we selected was Kerry Norwood for her project MESH (Major Emergency Sustainable Housing). This is a truly worthy 'eco' project in so many ways. Using readily available metal sections and mesh sheets, Kerry designed a modular house kit which can be fitted, in multiples, into a standard sized shipping container.

Created for use in sudden emergency situations, the MESH unit can be put together quickly and simply, with the addition of an internal plastic sheet ensuring that the house is weatherproof. The gabion like walls begin empty, but are designed to be filled with the rubble and detritus of the collapsed homes, allowing a new life to be literally built from the remnants of the old.

Its humanitarian and aid advantages are obvious, but it was the beautifully simple eloquence of the 'rebuilding' aspect which I particularly loved. To give someone the chance to help themselves - a new purpose in the chaos - is strikingly powerful.

Kerry is now deciding how to take this project forward, so I will post a little more (including some images) as soon as I am able.

Next - compARTment.

Over the past two weeks, we have become involved in a very exciting project in Brighton, with the compARTment team - a group of makers, designers and artists who are committed to rejuvenating the empty spaces around the city.

The pilot project is utilising two empty units in the soon-to-be-redeveloped Open Market in Brighton - filling them temporarily with a series of art installations, exhibitions and pop up spaces. Running from now until September or October this year, it is hoped that the varied activities will increase the footfall to the market, supporting the remaining stallholders.

We have become involved in the project in a few capacities - helping with some of the set up organisation bits, possibly designing some spaces for other people and actually creating a couple of installations ourselves.

Heard of pop-up shops? Well, we are going to have a pop-up studio - creating an exciting little space to call home for a week, where the good people of Brighton can come and say hello and talk to us about more exciting little (or large) spaces.

So there you go - two little things that we have done and are doing - both of which will be filled out with more info over the next few weeks!

And the solar and wind powered installations? Well, I am afraid that is one for next week. I haven't drawn them up yet.

watch this (previously empty) space...

we have been away, but like Arnie, we are back and with a lot to tell...

some bits are still embargoed, but there will be news VERY soon about a couple of very interesting little projects we are currently involved in.

empty spaces? pop up shops and exhibitions? temporary installations? solar and wind powered lighting creations?

coming soon to an empty space in Brighton soon...

that was the week that was...

Last week was pretty hectic here in the studio. there were a series of deadlines, a juggling of projects, an award to be awarded and two out-of-the-office trips.

It started relatively calmly, creating the outline concept for a new urban front garden for a gentleman on the sunny south coast. minimalist, lots of hedges and a variety of textural grasses and clipped forms. At the end of my scribbling I realised that it looked just like a screenshot from that good old '90's wonder, Tetras. I liked it very much. Fortunately, so did our client, so we are now pressing on with constructional drawings.

Next, we had to make an award. Not to go on our shelf you understand, but to be awarded to a graduate on the University of Sussex Product Design degree show - to the person, who, in our humble opinion could wear the badge of 'Best Eco Design 2010'.

We looked around the studio and found some bits and bobs and assembled this:

Made from recycled plastic with bank notes in, a hugely water damaged book, some screws and threaded rod and an old set of printers blocks. We were quite pleased with the finished effort.

So we then had to decide who was going to receive our assembled award, so I trundled up to the Falmer site of the University of Sussex to view the Innovate 2010 show.

I was blown away. The quality and range of projects was truly excellent and after much umming and aarhing I whittled it down to four very notable eco designs. And after even more umming I finally selected the winner.......(to be continued...)

Thursday found me whizzing up to Birmingham where the ever eclectic Gardeners' World Live show was squeezed into the stale halls and concrete expanses of the NEC, which has to be one of the most depressing places in all of the UK.

Once I had parked my car (to the tune of £8) and reminded myself that I was not in some technicolour 80's theme park I started to enjoy the show.

I loved the Girl Guides garden - there was something about the repetitional structure of the quote sticks against the waft of the wildflowers which particularly drew me in. Other lovelies included the rose Re-Bound garden by Andy Tudbury where I was allowed to sit on the pristine white bench and take in the scent that was captured in the space. The dappled shade on the hedges was lovely and the lawn was so flat you could have ironed a perfect crease on your trousers using it as a base.

I also caught up with Tom and Malcolm at Hooksgreen Herbs, and I was over the moon to hear that they were given a Gold medal for their exhibit. I was chuffed to bits for them and got a very stern look from the BBC film crew when I squealed with delight at the news.

Inside the sheds I found the fantastic James Alexander-Sinclair, who was working harder than a donkey on Blackpool beach in summer in the darkest corner of the NEC you could possibly find. Not the most inspiring of places, but James was lighting up the bleakness with his bright and sharp wit so no head torches were required.

After battling my way out of the car park I rumbled diagonally down the country to the lovely little market town of Bromyard where I was staying for the night before my Friday at the Three Counties Show.

The little sections I did see of Bromyard were lovely, which included my lovely little room in the beautiful Bay Horse pub on the High Street. A stunning oak beamed 16th C coach house, The Bay Horse was so full of character you could make a fortune bottling it and selling it to tourists. Everything was wonky, crittall windows creaked in the sun and it oozed history. Coffee in hand, I sat down and watched Gareth at Glyndebourne (which took me back a few years to when I was at music college) and relaxed for the first time in an age.

Breakfast was excellent, with a no-fuss vegetarian option and nice toast in a beautiful section of the dining room downstairs. Thank you to all of the Bay Horse - I can highly recommend it for a stay if you are around those parts...

A mini rally drive down to Malvern and I was at my second home, the Three Counties Showground for the Three Counties Show in watery sunshine.

I headed straight for our 25th Anniversary Garden, which had been developing over the last 5 weeks since it's first outing at the Spring Show. Like a proud mother hen, I clucked around the space, smiling at how lovely the Stipa tenuissima looked, how the fennel had developed into smokey bronze clouds and how the spots of alliums drew the eyes from one section of the garden to another.

Today, Monday the 21st June, it will be dismantled forever.

But, that is what happens with showgardens, they are fleeting.

After taking far too many photos, I wandered around the show with a massive handwoven willow dragonfly I had bought as a Father's Day present for my Dad and eventually met up with the beautiful and fabulous Nina Acton and the very lovely Mark Diacono who I had met a bit before. We all continued around the show, tasting some lovely beer, talking about yellow courgettes and buying more huge dragonflies made from willow. It was grand.

The drizzle signalled my departure from Worcestershire and after shoehorning the dragonflies into the car I whizzed back down south, with a brief delay on the ever predictable and accident laden M25.

What a week.

guerillas in our midst...

as the last post mentions, we have recently updated our website - something which was widely overdue but one of those things you just don't get around to doing.

Personal marketing is something that we all do without even realising (wearing particular clothes to display our affections to a certain genre, wearing a particular 'smell' to attract a certain type of person etc etc) .

Business marketing is a slightly different (and usually much more costly) to undertake. And if you are a business trying to be as 'green' as possible, the avenues become even more thinned out. Blanket flyers to a thousand homes and businesses may be a no no, even if they are recycled.

So are there ways of spreading the word about your business or cause in a different way?

Of course there are - guerilla marketing is a movement that we have all experienced in some way or another (from graffiti to empty spaces being transformed into temporary gardens) and there are a few people who are really trying to green up the whole consumerist world of information transfer.

We are in the process of starting our own eco guerilla marketing campaign, and we found a lot of inspiration from these guys.

watch this space for our little installations which should be popping up around Brighton in the next two months or so...

new website alert...

I have been pondering the new website design for a little while, but finally, we have got it all finished and it is now live.

visit the sleeker, updated content website here - www.clairepotterdesign.com.