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Most old tires end up in landfills, but these amazing artists, philanthropists and creators have gone out of their way to ensure that these old tires are turned into something better. WebEcoist has 25 cool items made from these useful, but no longer needed car accessories.
Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is known for pushing the boundaries of art. In the past, he’s made a machine that produces excrement and has tattooed pigs. More recently, he’s been engraving beautiful and intricate patterns into car tires.
Link -via Dude Craft
Previously: Tire Art by Betsabeé Romero
Benjamin Krempel founded a company called PumpTire, which is marketing a rather unique bicycle tire. It has a partially open tube on the outer circumference. As the wheel turns, it opens and closes the tube, which draws air from the outside and pumps it into the interior of the tire. When the tire reaches maximum pressure, it shuts off. In a test ride featured in the video, the tire inflated from 22 to 52 psi after three and a half minutes of riding. Link -via DVICE
Korean artist Yong Ho Ji takes old tires and turns them into awesome sculptures of sharks, horses, monsters, and men. Much of his work is a warning about the dangers of genetic manipulation:
Ho’s concept of mutants grew out of his life in Seoul, where there is fierce political debate over genetic engineering. In school, Yong Ho read Darwin and was galvanized by how his theory of evolution applied to man’s manipulation with nature. Already, he says, cats and dogs are bred to emphasize their domesticated traits and downplay their wild sides. The sculptures can be taken as warnings; if we’re not careful, we may soon lose the ability to see animals in their natural state altogether.
Old tires are used for backyard swings and shredded for playground mulch, but that’s only the beginning of ways to use tires that are no longer road-worthy. This garden house was covered with tire treads to make it weatherproof. See more imaginative ways to reuse rubber at Killer Web Directory. Link
(Image source: Millegomme)
The architecture firm Minarc designed and built a kitchen sink that’s made from old rubber tires. It’s called RUBBiSH and is made in the following manner:
The rubber from the tires is melted down and cleansed of debris, and the tiny inherent metal fibers that give a tire its road resistance are then formed into a sheet. This sheet is stretched over a base frame—made of wood, metal, or any other material out of which bathroom furniture can be fashioned—and anchored down by the drain collar. This creates a shallow-sloped surface for water to be siphoned away, but not a clunky profile; in fact, the material used is so minimal that, the manufacturer claims, the sinks use less than one pound of rubber.
Recycle, reuse, rethink how we look at garbage. Tires are an especially volatile item, as they take up space and emit terrible fumes when burned. Check out Oddee‘s collection of creative sculptures made from discarded tires.
Link | Above example found at mo_metalart’s Flickr set.
Previously on Neatorama – Tired.
Update 10/15/09 by Alex: The artist is Mirko Siakkou-Flodin, and this particular tire sculpture is at the Jumeirah Beach Residence in Dubai, UAE. Oddee is a great source of many interesting things, and they usually credit their photos, so I wonder why they didn’t do it in this instance.
