by Michelle Jacobson
3 Ways to Give Yourself a Boost
Enhance your well-being with popular self-care practices from around the world. (Adapted from the USC Dornsife Spring/Summer 2024 Magazine)
-
Forest Bathing
Originating in Japan, forest bathing is a practice that allows you to immerse yourself in nature and focus on your senses. The NYSID Health, Wellness, and Sustainable Design Club also embraced Forest Bathing in a workshop this past Spring with Brooke Mellon. Potential benefits include reduced stress, lower blood pressure, and an improved immune system. -
Saunas
Widely popular in Finland and Sweden, this traditional immersion in hot, dry steam may improve cardiovascular and mental health, relieve chronic pain, reduce the risk of stroke, dementia, and respiratory diseases, as well as help you sleep better and reduce stress. -
Vorfreude
A German concept that translates to “anticipation of joy.” By celebrating everyday delights and creating anticipatory joy, you can increase well-being, reduce stress, and avoid burnout. Not every event has to be significant; small, everyday moments can be celebrated to create joy in your life.
New Sustainable Products
Patricia Urquiola has created “Sport,” the world’s first upholstery textile made exclusively from 100% ocean-bound plastic waste. Discarded plastics that miss recycling bins often end up in our waterways, smothering coral reefs, kelp forests, and other marine life, as well as contaminating fish and other sea creatures. Inspired by sportswear, this textile collection has a contemporary, high-tech vibe, featuring 20 colorways with miniature floral motifs that result in richly textured, multi-dimensional patterns and hues. Kvadrat will be producing this environmentally conscious material.
Ann Sacks Tile has launched Transcendence, a shimmering tile collection by Lebanese designer Nada Debs. The tiles are made from materials gathered by Kohler WasteLAB, repurposing trash that would otherwise end up in a landfill, such as glaze, clay scraps, and iron slag. Debs has designed motifs with arches, evoking the traditional hammam in her native Lebanon. These motifs symbolize renewal and rebirth, giving new life to items that would otherwise perish on the Earth.
New York City Sustainability Notes
The High Line - Moynihan Connector in Hudson Yards has received Azure Magazine’s Best in Urban Design Infrastructure Award. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Field Operations collaborated on the project.
The High Line is one of New York City’s beautiful parks, built along an old rail line from Hudson Yards through Chelsea, ending in the Meatpacking District. The first of two bridges, Timber Bridge, is one of Manhattan’s first mass timber structures. The second bridge, The Woodland Bridge, includes soil beds and a diverse ecosystem of trees, shrubs, flowers, bushes, and plants that change with the seasons.
Check out these two beautiful additions to the High Line and witness how the construction of the bridges helps to reduce carbon and provides a safe, accessible, and fresh way to arrive in the city on foot from the new Moynihan Station.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard, a former naval shipbuilding facility, is now a sprawling manufacturing complex situated just off the East River. Several new sustainable projects are in development thanks to Yard Labs, a new initiative inviting green technology companies to test their ideas and products. Yard Labs is a 300-acre parcel that functions as a city within a city, providing companies a space to test their projects and products aimed at making our environment cleaner and more energy-efficient. (Adapted from WSJ, April 9, 2024)