Pop a cork for…cork!

What better way to celebrate Earth Day than with a paean to my favorite eco-friendly material? Versatile, sustainable cork (made from the renewable bark of Mediterranean cork oak trees), is experiencing something of a rebirth, with new shapes, colors, formats, and uses. Take a look:

1) Use cork on the ceiling to deaden sound, as edgy design firm AvroKO did at Park Avenue Spring, above!

2) Cork accessories are always divine, especially when rendered in really sleek lines, like VivaTerra’s tray.

3) Use it on the floor, where it’s both cushion-y and resilient; the material’s structure traps little air-like bubbles inside, so it spring back after you walk on it. Check out Globus Cork’s beautifully colored versions, which come in crazy shapes like hexagons!

4) Check out this great new(ish) product: cork penny tiles–love. Habitus will do them in custom colors, too.

5) You can even use cork to cover furniture! Try Tessuto in Sughero, a quirky-cool upholstery fabric, also from Habitus.

6) Cork comes in all sorts of intriguing formats. Try MIO’s easy-to-install, interlocking tiles on floors or walls–where it can dampen sound, function as a bulletin board, or even warm up a chilly room (it’s a natural insulator). MIO also just came up with these cool modular cork trivet/placemats, too:

7) Try out these other intriguing designs…Cork Concepts’ plank-shaped floor tiles that look like painted wood, AmCork’s tiles, animated with colored rivulets, and Expanko’s darkly decadent Terra tile.

Or pop a bottle of organic bubbly to celebrate the day. Check out picks from Treehugger, who grilled my fave New York shop– Appellation Wine & Spirits–on the subject.

–Jen Renzi

Technorati Tags: cork accessories, colorful cork planks, eco-friendly flooring