OMG Design: Can Style Move Us to Environmental Action?

Date/Time:	Wednesday, 30 Mar 2011 from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Location:	Kocimski Auditorium, 101 College of Design
Cost:	free
Contact:	Chris Martin
Phone:	515-294-1639
Channel:	College of Design
Categories:	Lectures
Actions:	Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder

Peter Danko is a furniture designer and owner of Peter Danko Designs. His designs, lectures and writing center on making the transition to living in harmony with nature. He believes the materials that best tell this story are those that can be seen by the casual observer to be green. His personal challenge is to make beautiful objects with materials that Obviously Manifest Green (OMG).

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Danko believes it is the job of architects and designers to incorporate OMG materials that tell the story of a comfortable, beautiful, fun and romantic future, and that only the design community can move people from the status quo to choose that which makes a more environmentally balanced world.

Danko's use of ply-bending, or bending wood in layers, combined with his use of other recycled and sustainable materials, significantly reduces the wood used in construction of his furniture when compared to traditional construction. This is because veneer yields 8-10 times more usable wood from a log than does solid lumber. A number of his seating designs incorporate nylon seat belts from production overruns/remnants.

Danko received a BA in fine art and art history from the University of Maryland in 1971. His work has been exhibited at the American Crafts Museum, American Design Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery, among others, and is a part of several of these and other institutions' collections. He holds a number of mechanical and design patents.