October 2011
Roderick Wiles, American Hardwood Export Council director for Africa, Middle East, India and Oceania BGreen: What are strategic advantages and benefits of using American hardwoods in interior design projects? Roderick: Beauty, a wide range of choice, consistency, high performance in application and solid environmental credentials with a proven record of sustainability. BGreen: What is the key aesthetic value of American hardwoods? Roderick: Aesthetic values are subjective, but it would be fair to say that American hardwoods offer a natural warmth, colour and genuine feeling of well-being to any application.
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BGreen: What hardwood species would you most recommend for sustainable interior design? Roderick: Any American hardwood species offers sustainability as an inherent factor. However, we must also be mindful of how the US hardwood forest is made up and of which species are more plentiful than others. To this end, the oaks (red and white), maples (hard and soft), ash and tulipwood are the most commercially-available.
CONSTRUCTION
BGreen: What are the environmental benefits of American hardwoods? Roderick: They are renewable, sustainable and naturally regenerating. As they grow, the trees absorb carbon and when they are cut down and turned in to products, the carbon remains locked in. They are carbon negative and this cannot be said for many other materials.
Two sustainable lighting solutions by Phillips
BGreen: Recently, AHEC worked with Samuel Creations to produce the CUBOID, a unique sustainable design project for the Festival of Interior Design. Why did AHEC decide to involve themselves with the CuBOID? Roderick: CuBOID looked to be the first cutting edge design project of its kind in the Middle East and offered AHEC the possibility to showcase American hardwoods in a high profile event, while working closely with key designers and players in the interior design community. Ultimately, we want to demonstrate how a natural and age-old materials, such as, American hardwoods, can be used in leading design and alongside high end and high tech products. CuBOID has also been designed with sustainability as a key criterion and we wanted to make sure that wood could be used in such a project and not cast aside as lacking in environmental credibility.
PowerBalance
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When it comes to lighting an office space with LED luminaires, people are willing to invest in sustainability, but only at reasonable cost. At the same time, new systems need to comply with office lighting norms to ensure a comfortable working environment. PowerBalance is an attractively priced LED luminaire specially developed to meet all office requirements. It consumes significantly less energy while offering longer life of the light source, resulting in lower operational cost compared to traditional luminaires.
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