Spotlight on Sustainability:
Green Design Gets a Glam Makeover

Good green design is no longer an oxymoron. That’s the message of the San Francisco Design Center’s Winter Market 2006, Beyond Green. One look around SFDC’s showrooms, and it’s evident that environmentally friendly, non-toxic home furnishings are coming of age. And, unlike the rough-hewn look of earlier eco-offerings, this season’s green designs are deliciously stylish, more like wearing a pair of Manolos than a pair of Birkenstocks.

Following is a mini-tour highlighting some of the green products featured at SFDC’s Winter Market 2006.

Budji Collections, Inc. – Enid Ford Atelier

Antonio “Budji” Layug’s passion is bringing the harmony of nature indoors to generate beautiful, peaceful living spaces. The Filipino-American designer uses plantation grown bamboo, cut above the roots for constant regeneration, in his clean-lined, contemporary furnishings, all made by Filipino artisans using traditional techniques and indigenous, renewable resources. This year he is debuting the comfortable Regine Armchair, crafted from renewable, plantation-grown materials. A fresh approach to a classic, the Regine Armchair features abaca fibers woven on a frame of tanguile wood, a native species of Philippine mahogany. The Budji Collection is available at Enid Ford Atelier in SFDC’s Galleria building.

El: environmental language – Sloan Miyasato

Chicago-based Jill Salisbury is marking the West Coast debut of her smart, sustainable collection, el, the minimalist acronym she uses to represent her company’s theme, environmental language. Failing in her search for furniture that combined both high style and sustainability in equal measure, Salisbury left her job as the interior design manager of an architectural firm and set out to create a line of eco-chic, heirloom quality alternatives for the residential market. She clearly succeeded.

Standouts from Salisbury’s environmentally friendly line include the Pava Bistro Table in walnut, rift-cut oak or cherry – all made from certified sources and finished with natural lacquer – and the Origami Lounge Chair and Ottoman. The frames of the Origami Lounge and Ottoman, made of wood culled from certified, sustainable forests, sit atop stainless steel bases. The cushions’ interior materials include formaldehyde-free wheat board, natural latex, cotton batting and barrier cloth, and other natural materials. The final covers, of course, are up to the buyer, although a wide selection of upholstery materials free of chemical finishing treatments is available. el’s environmentally friendly line can be seen at Sloan Miyasato in the Showplace.

Q Collection – De Sousa Hughes

New on the design scene, the Q Collection was co-founded by environmental management expert Jesse Johnson and interior designer Anthony Cochran, who cut his design teeth with haute decor gurus John Saladino and Victoria Hagan before joining Martha Stewart Living as senior style editor. Like so many others creating the green furniture revolution, the Q team couldn’t find environmentally friendly furnishings they liked in the marketplace, so they set out to combine high-end design with the purest, least toxic materials available.

The cozy, comfortable and chic Todhunter club chair and the spare Julia end tables, the latest from the Q Collection, exemplify the young company’s commitment to creating sleek, modern, sustainable furnishings that take human health and the environment into consideration. The Q Collection is on view at De Sousa Hughes in the Showplace.

Odegard, Inc. – Alexander’s Decorative Rugs

Stephanie Odegard, founder of Odegard, Inc., has made social sustainability a hallmark of her made-in-Nepal carpeting. A former Peace Corps volunteer and business development consultant with the World Bank, the UN, and the government of Nepal, Odegard developed a quality, sustainable product made from vegetable-dyed, hand-spun Himalayan wools and environmentally friendly hemp. She employs thousands creating the elegant carpets that grace the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the homes of celebrities like Robert Redford, Christy Turlington and Jerry Seinfeld.

The production of Odegard's carpets is as distinctive as their designs. Each hand-carded, hand-knotted carpet carries the Rugmark Foundation label certifying that no child labor was used to produce the rug. Proceeds from each Rugmark carpet are used to monitor rug-making facilities, rescue children working in the carpet industry and provide for their education.

Odegard’s latest line – Verte – is woven from the remarkably resilient fiber known as hemp, an ancient, renewable resource that has anti-mildew properties and a natural pest-resistance. Hemp fields don’t need to be sprayed with insecticides – a definite bonus for the people who pick the fibers and knot the rugs. The new carpets feature natural colors in warm straw tones, pale golds and nuanced hues of blue gray. The carpets are available at Alexander’s Decorative Rugs in SFDC’s Showplace.

création baumann – De Sousa Hughes

One of the world’s most technologically advanced textile mills is the Swiss company, création baumann. Among the selection of innovative fabrics shown at De Sousa Hughes, one can find giant laser cut circles in vibrant reds or subtle grays. A durable, shear synthetic printed with a jumble of typewriter characters called “Typo” has been used at the New York Times, and a line called “Inkjet” can be printed with any image the customer chooses. “Phantom,” an ingeniously designed blackout fabric, is colored on both sides. And, many of création baumann’s textiles are double width so that they can be used on large picture windows or king-size beds without seams, in addition to being tested for durability and washability.

But all that design innovation doesn’t make creation baumann’s fabrics green. What does is the company’s commitment to meeting all Swiss environmental codes, which are more stringent than comparable U.S. codes. The company makes a point of filtering and recycling all wastes and run-off, often difficult to achieve in the textile industry. They even keep samples of water for testing in case anything does go awry. creation baumann’s style savvy is good news for designers; its environmental expertise is good news for the planet. création baumann fabrics are available at De Sousa Hughes in the SFDC Showplace.

ADO ActiBreeze – The Brooks Collection

ActiBreeze fabrics take green a step further with their ability to improve air quality. Superb for both residential and commercial spaces, when activated by light these fabrics break up pollutants and unpleasant odors into their harmless basic components, creating healthier homes, offices and healthcare facilities. A boon to people suffering from allergies and asthma or sensitive to environmental toxins, these high-tech textiles work by incorporating a photo-catalytic process that is triggered by any kind of light.

As stylish as they are hard working, ActiBreeze fabrics come in a rainbow of colors and variety of textures and patterns, including shears, herringbone wovens, contemporary plaids, stripes and floral prints. This spring, ADO will be introducing five new ActiBreeze fabrics in 74 colors.

For more information about Winter Market 2006, call the SFDC Concierge desks, 415.490.5888 or 415.490.5889.