Scottish installation artist Lee Borthwick has created an urban tidal wave made from waste pallets. Using 500 wooden pieces, Borthwick arranged the strips from darkest to lightest and threaded them together like a tapestry. The result resembles a waterfall with a sense of movement, curve and a dramatic towering effect. ‘The piece is responding to environmental changes and reflecting on how the urban environment can engulf us leaving us disconnected with nature,’ Borthwick explains. Borthwick graduated from RCA in 2008 and now has her own studio at Bainbridge Studios West Norwood, London. In With The Tide premiered at Tent London during London Design Festival.

Sustainable house

ARCHITECTS: Johnsen Schmaling Architects
http://www.johnsenschmaling.com/
PROJECT: OS House
Racine, Wisconsin
For many preservationists, the prospect of a boldly contemporary house in the middle of a historic district is the stuff of nightmares. But not in Racine, Wisconsin, an old manufacturing city south of Milwaukee, on the shore of Lake Michigan, where Frank Lloyd Wright built his famous S.C. Johnson Wax Administration Building, in 1936, and a handful of other structures. There, in a vintage neighborhood close to downtown, a new, stunningly modernist dwelling has been attracting gawkers and winning mostly raves.
The house has also won kudos—and a LEED Platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council—for its sustainable features, which are so seamlessly integrated as to be virtually invisible. These include geothermal heating and cooling; photovoltaic roof laminates; a solar water heater; bamboo floors and other renewable materials; high-efficiency windows that flood the house with natural light; rain barrels and a rain garden; subtly layered fiber-cement panels that create a rain screen and an insulated air cavity; and permeable pavers.