PROVIDENCE and SAN FRANCISO – After two years of planning, Ecolect LLC has gone live with its free online library of sustainable materials. The launch was announced today from the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design/Industrial Designers Society of America “Connection ’07” World Design Congress in San Francisco.
The site – whose name was created by combining the words ecology and intellect – is the brainchild of Rhode Island School of Design graduates Matt Grigsby and Joe Gebbia.
Their goal, they say, is to provide architects and industrial designers with a one-stop source for the answers to three key questions: where to find sustainable materials; what makes them sustainable; who else is using them, and how.
“Right now, if you want to find materials, find out which is most sustainable … how much quantity [manufacturers] can supply … you have to go to several different sites,” Grigsby told PBN last month, before the site was launched. It is a difficulty the duo first encountered during their student years, an era recalled by the presence of RISD president Roger Mandle on the Ecolect advisory board.
Today, Grigsby is principal and founder of the Providence-based industrial design firm Design Awareness. He also is the winner of this year’s Rising Star Innovator award – one of the PBN and R.I. Economic Development Corporation’s 2007 Rhode Island Innovation Awards – for his role in developing Ecolect.
Gebbia is principal and founder of the San Francisco-based Juice Studios.
“We are pleased to have been asked by the conference organizers to showcase Ecolect to conference attendees from around the world,” he said in a statement today. “Like the Congress itself, Ecolect will be creating connections between multiple communities to promote the use of sustainable materials along with providing easy access to our free online library of sustainable items.”
Product reviews by users will help expand the site’s content, which also will includes a blog featuring articles on new materials and other topics of interest.
The blog’s lead item today is an invite to the launch party planned this evening during the IDSA conference, at the Swissnex Annex in San Francisco, where Ecolect’s founders will be joining with Branch – an online retailer of sustainable home products, led by Ecolect advisory board member Paul Donald – in an evening of drinks, products, material samples and celebration.
Ecolect LLC, founded in Rhode Island, has offices in Providence and San Francisco. To learn more, visit www.ecolect.net or read Natalie Myers’ Oct. 1 PBN article, “Making it easier to pick sustainable materials.”
