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Greenbuilt Ecological products
Wood
Design serves best when it functions for the user, and to achieve that end, designers have to be open to the world. It is a wonderful task to see the world through the eyes of others. To imagine oneself using something that we have designed, implies that whatever we design should also be healthy and life affirming. Much has been made recently of the design community`s responsibility to our planet but equally important is the designer`s personal responsibility for the health of their clients and their consumers. Designers who have decided to apply environmental solutions are learning that healthy design can reduce illness, reduce pollution and reduce stress. Design can create wellness in body and spirit. Feng Shui is an ancient school of health and success, through design principals. Healthy design encompasses everything from the air we breathe, the sounds we hear, the light we see by and the machines for living which we employ. From bed to chair, to table and car, from door to doorknob, all are designed, all affect our lives profoundly, and all justify contemplation as to their benefit in our lives. The most important materials specified by designers or selected by consumers include those that we surround ourselves with. An important consideration to health through design is the amount of time we spend in contact with these specific surroundings. Our sleeping environments are important to review because we spend several hours there daily in an unconscious and vulnerable state. Imagine the difference to our health between breathing in healthy or not so healthy air with every breath as we sleep, every day, every week, and every year. This simple exercise of the imagination should be enough to convince us to consider the materials surrounding us in our sleeping quarters. Fresh, clean air inhaled during sleep, promotes better rest and rejuvenation. Polluted air can slowly but inevitably lead to various forms of chronic illness and allergies. Particularly for children but also for everyone the bedroom is a great place to start designing for healthy remediation of our living environments. In a pristine wilderness, simply opening the windows is the best thing we can do, however, an open wood fire in a log cabin can also create a risk of airborn pollution. Clean, fresh and ideally negatively ionized air, as from the seaside or a creekside coming to us through an open window is the best way for us to get a healthy sleep. Perhaps this is why we traditionally go to the sea or a river or lake for rejuvenation at cottages and resorts. There is a measurable physical difference to our health in this type of environment. Contrast this with a room lacking ventilation, with plastic based carpet, over petroleum based underpad, on plywood floors made with formaldehyde based adhesives. This may sound scary but it is actually a description of standard construction and finishing materials for the floor of most North American homes. Healthy design alternatives for flooring include hardwood floors with "green" finishes, or Marmoleum flooring which is a "green" resilient alternative to vinyl flooring or natural fibre carpet on a felt underpad or without underlay. These should be over construction floor sheeting made with formaldehyde free solvents or on floors finished with a concrete topping. The alternatives reduce VOC`s which are "Volatile Organic Compounds" which tend to drift up from flooring and can be inhaled during sleep. The new car smell from petroleum based carpets are VOC odours which everyone can recognize, but which we should try to avoid, particularly during sleep. So after we have cleaned up our bedroom floors and opened the windows what should we consider next? The walls and ceiling are generally painted or wallpapered in bedrooms and sadly the petrochemical giants are lurking here too with VOC`s off-gasing into our sleeping environments from vinyl wall-coverings, paints and finishes. Never sleep in a room freshly painted or wallpapered and trust your nose if you have any doubts about when to re-enter a freshly decorated room. To their credit the wall-covering industry is leading the movement toward better indoor air quality though public and consumer pressure for safer products. In the hospitality environment where I have designed a large number of projects, many new environmental wall-coverings are available as alternates to vinyl wall-coverings with names like "Innvironments". This is because of pressure from corporate booking agents wanting a "green" advantage for their clients. Europe has led the movement toward safer and "greener" paints and finishes and many fine product lines are now readily available around the world. North America is now in catch up mode with American companies like AFM producing healthier paints and finishes.
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