Phillipe Starck comes good!

A little while ago, Phillipe Starck almost gave up.... now this:

From 'The Australian' Today
August 11, 2008 09:18am AEST
Starck's choice to go green
Maurice Chittenden, London | August 11, 2008
HIS designs are better known for looking good than for practicality. Now Philippe Starck,
the Frenchman who has styled everything from lemon squeezers to luxury hotels, has
entered the world of green power, describing most of his previous work as "unnecessary".
Starck plans to launch the first designer wind turbine for the home in Britain next year and claims it will cost as little as pound stg. 400 ($860) to provide a small house with 60 per cent of the power it needs for heating and lighting. Its square blade rotates around the vertical axis when the wind hits, turning a generator in its supporting pole.

Starck's other environmental designs include an electric car, a solar and hydrogen-powered boat and a solar-panel film to stick over windows.
Alice Rawsthorn, former director of the Design Museum in London, said the turbine was "deftly
designed".

"Starck has been so successful at persuading people to buy visually seductive but often pointless objects, that he may well be able to do the same for something which is actually useful," she said.
Starck, 59, turned to "democratic ecology" after claiming he was tired of producing status-driven items.

He said he was ashamed that "everything I designed is unnecessary".
Last week, he described how a man going to a supermarket might spot the turbine, think it was "a really sexy object" and conclude it was no more than the cost of a useless gadget. "He brings the windmill home, goes to his roof and 15 minutes later he sees it turning and producing energy. Wow!" he said.

Do-it-yourself power generation is seen as a growing trend as the price of power rises.
Starck's previous concepts have drawn plenty of criticism. His lemon squeezer was described by one critic as costing "perhaps 100 times as much as a plastic supermarket juicer and yet does a job 100 times worse".

Last week, critics on design websites were rounding on the new wind turbine. "It's a giant mixer
attachment," said one entry on gizmodo.com.
The Sunday Times