Thursday, May 31, 2012
Tri-Lox: Reclaim. Redesign. Refinish.
Posted on Thu, May 31, 2012 at 1:04 PM
Photos Clément Pascal
New York City is in a perpetual state of destruction and renewal, a constant flux in which the old and worn is discarded in favor of the shiny and new—it is, generally, a disheartening pattern of waste and forgetting. Enter Tri-Lox, a Greenpoint-based studio collective of artists and craftspeople who take the unwanted, unloved, and unsaleable miscellany of the ever-rebuilding city and repurpose it into truly beautiful objects. Spearheaded by Ellis Isenberg, in partnership with Brooklyn salvage heroes Build It Green (where Isenberg also works, see p. 24), Tri-Lox finds amazing building materials in unexpected places—old water towers, for example: California Red- wood from an old one in Coney Island turns into a gorgeous coffee table; Alaskan Yellow Cedar from a SoHo tower? Ideal for a custom-built vanity. But it’s not just high-end custom work—Tri-Lox also takes garbage-stream material and reclaims it for useful household items, like shelving brackets. As their website says: “The constant renewal of urban life presents the opportunity to practice sustainable creation, beginning with the selection and careful deconstruction of disregarded resources that surround us.”
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