One of the many tasks that I love as the PR person for Liebherr in North America is event management. Last week, we held an event at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show in New York City called “Wine Meets Design” covering two of my favourite topics in the whole world. Who wouldn’t have fun with this one? (Please note: I am Canadian so my blog entries will use “favourite” “colour” and “humour” and I’ll try and throw in some metric in the future just to be fun!)
The event brought together renowned architect David Ling, davidlingarchitect.com, and wine guru Michael Green, michaelgreen.com, to discuss integrating wine storage in design projects. I’ve worked with Michael for several years but during the arrangements and execution of this event, I had the chance to get to know David Ling. I absolutely drool over his portfolio of work – streamlined and interesting with an incredible sense of light and space. He designs wine areas to provide ideal lighting in order to best judge the colour of wine when tasting. How is that for detail?
But the thing that really struck me when I interviewed David about sustainable practices was his confession that it was one project he worked on in Oregon several years ago (hear details here) that absolutely opened his eyes. It was this wine bar design where he took cues from the environment to reuse materials, work with natural materials, and build a respect for nature into every design decision. Now, he says, it just comes – pardon the pun – naturally. Why wouldn’t he continue making these kinds of decisions even when working on a NYC loft?
We all have our green eureka moments. I’m married to a New Zealander, so we’ve always had a fairly earth-friendly household reflecting his upbringing; pesticides have always been a no-no, veggie gardens rule and composting a way of life. Despite this, I still experienced a huge green eureka when I started working with Liebherr four years ago and I was researching their manufacturing practices. I read this line, “the energy released during production is recovered and utilized again in heating the manufacturing and office environments.” This was 2006 and Liebherr had been doing this for a very long time. I remember thinking, why wouldn’t EVERY business do this? It made me read more, think more and sitting in my office in southwestern Ontario, I looked around and thought, “What can I do here?”
Green is certainly verging on mainstream now, but even two years ago, it wasn’t. If the exhibitors at last week’s AD Home Design Show were any indication, more and more companies are having eureka moments and are making strong environmental commitments.
What was yours?
David Ling interview
