LiViNG - Georgia Straight

SCRAPS OF SHEET
METAL FIND MOD
NEW FORM IN
THESE DRADER
LAMPS ($350 FOR
THE SET).
sheet metal; and a room-dividing
screen made from old closet doors
held together with hinges.
Vreeling credits his background as
an Alberta farm boy with giving him
an ingrained affinity for upcycling.
“I think farmers really get this and
have embraced it in their lives,” he
insists. “Growing up, we would use
old cans in the shop, or old jugs to
use as shelving compartments for
different screws and nails and things.
We would always have a bunch of
scrap metal beside the shop. We
were quite far north, so it was hard to
get parts, but if a piece of equipment
broke down, we could just chop up
some metal and weld it together and
create our own new part.”
It’s a way of living that our big-city
culture could learn something from,
and Vreeling notes that designsavvy
urbanites are just as prone to
the throwaway mentality as everyone
else—if not more so. “With the
modern/minimalist aesthetic that
most people seem to embrace in
magazines and in our visual culture
through publications like Dwell,
they think that having a room full
of scrap stuff is somehow ungodly,
that it doesn’t serve a purpose in
their life, or that they’re above that,”
he says. “They’ll just buy something
new. Well, granted, they may have
the money to do so, but is it worth
doing that, in raping the environment
more?”
Vreeling will offer more compelling
food for thought when he
discusses Re-Use at the Vancouver
Home + Interior Design Show,
which runs October 16 to 19 at B.C.
Place. See www.bchomeandgardenshow.com
for details. -
FAT CROW DESIGN’S
CACTUS COAT RACK
($500) PUTS OLD
SKIS TO NEW USE.
| FALL 2008 | | GEORGIA STRAIGHT LIVING |
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