For my final
post I wanted to speak about green design and sustainability, it is
embarrassing to say it, but back in my country things like recycling, or sustainable
stores are just beginning, we don’t have things such as blue boxes, charges for
plastic bags at supermarkets, different trash containers, or others. Maybe you
could see a few recycling programs in the most accommodate neighborhoods in the
capital of Chile , Santiago, and a few
malls that provide different trash containers for post recycling but that it´s
pretty much everything. For this reason
it was a huge impact to know that recycling issues ,concerns, and their
integration into design matters began around 1980, because for my experience in
Chile this type of matters have only been an issue since maybe a decade ago.
We may not
have all of this but something that it is present ,and more every day, is the
sustainable branding , and by this I mean stores that reflect sustainable
concerns, or products that involve recycling
and sustainable production in their line.
This lead me
to a question because green design has been present in the first world
countries since the 80’s but even though brands have been taking care of those
issues, I feel that just now the involvement of green design is being taken in
the big picture. Sustainable stores, 100% organic cotton clothes, even jeans
produced from plastic and with less amount of water. I wanted to repeat what I
called the “google experiment” making a strict search to prove that what I was
thinking about , and by this I mean that interior design of stores based on
green ideals, have had a huge growth in the last decade.
This is what
I typed “opens new sustainable store”, I didn’t want to type a specific area
such as clothing, furnishing,
electronics or other, and also I didn’t want to type a specific
location.
The firs
result I got was from October of 2013,
really recent, the country : United
kingdom, and the brand Sainsbury´s (to be honest I had to do a little research
because I didn’t even knew what type of store was ) renowned supermarket
store one of the largest in the UK. In
their design their proposal was to make a zero waste to landfill and zero carbon emissions, also materials such as
“hybrid glued laminated timber and steel structural
frame” helped reducing the carbon print, …100 prismatic roof lights reducing
the need of electrical light and a
biogas generator to provide both heat and electricity.”
The second
result was from Puma , in august of 2012, in this case was the first Puma worldwide
fully sustainable store , located
in India, country we all know for being one of the biggest manufacturers for international
brands.
“In keeping
with our mission of becoming the most desirable and sustainable Sportlifestyle
company PUMA is happy to take this pioneering step forward for the retail
industry”said Franz Koch , CEO of PUMA. “ Establishing a sustainable PUMA store
underlines our commitment to reduce CO2 emissions, energy, water and waste in
PUMA offices, stores, warehouses and direct supplier factories by 2015”
The store
features recycled steel from old DVD players, 90% of direct access for natural
light, 100% solar powered , recycled wood
for furniture and low VOC (voltaic organic compound ) paint, occupancy
sensors, and a green roof.
Finally the
3rd result was from Levi´s from July of 2013 also, in this case located in the U.S. specifically in San
Francisco. This store used 79% of the demolition materials of the original construction and used them in
the reconstruction, as well as only recycled wood . The store as also a LEED
gold certificate and 90% of their equipment is energy efficient. Finally their
concept for this store also reaches their product, selling jeans that are
produced with the minimum amount of plastic bottles achieved with only 8 of them on each jeans.
After reading about this 3 cases, indeed this last decade have showed
huge advances in the design of sustainable stores, brands that are taking that
extra step and reaching not only sustainable and green products , but also are
introducing green design into their stores and company identity, the question
about why this hasn’t been done previously has one clear answer, technological development, technology that had allowed creating
systems such as the one in the Puma
store that enable to have air conditioning from the earth itself, or as the
photovoltaic roofs in Sainsbury´s or the
recycling of old construction materials for the rebuilt of new locations as the
Levis case.
This has really made me want to research even more, technology only goes
faster, and I personally think in not a faraway future , examples like this ,
hopefully, will become everyday components in architecture and design.
F!
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