Jillian Pritchard Cooke grew up learning to treasure nature and its products. She was born in Dublin, Ireland, and spent her early years in a small village in England until her family moved to the United States when she was seven. She says her parents taught her early on about how to use wisely and waste nothing, and she buried herself in art and nature.
“We had very little,” Cooke said. “We weren’t poor, but we just were not raised in a throwaway society.”
Cooke, 48, joined the early environmental movements of the 1970s and later moved to Manhattan, where she joined efforts to clean up the gritty city while attending the Fashion Institute of Technology and Design.
“It was a time when I was being molded into what I’m doing now,” she said.
After graduating from FIT, she spent time working in California, where she says they are “so far ahead of us in terms of energy conservation.” She found her niche by combining her love of nature, art and design and 15 years ago founded DES-SYN, a national eco-sensitive design firm.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be an environmental activist, at least not in the way most people think of it, but getting the word out ... through their personal environment I think is the fastest way to spread it,” said Cooke, president of the firm. “Your space is your most important thing.”
Now that throwaways and consumerism are “what society is all about,” she said, her vision is to create homes and spaces that are sustainable, that are not wasteful, and that celebrate rather than exploit the world we live in. “I am a firm believer in bringing the outside in,” Cooke said.
As Cooke has done most recently with EcoManor, the first residence in the Southeast to be LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and several other green projects throughout the city, she collects materials for the interiors – cotton, linen, wool, silk, even hemp – that are long-lasting, natural and easily decomposable.
In EcoManor, the future home of Rutherford and Laura Turner Seydel, there is, for instance, less wood. Many of the cabinets are made from pressed hay, which Cooke says grows back in 12 months, thereby reducing the impact on the environment. Some doors are made of pressed wheat, or lyptus wood, a relative of eucalyptus, which grows back in two to five years.
Almost all of the fabrics in the house are organic. The rambling ironwork of many of the fixtures is made from scrap metal. And, to maximize the use of all resources, Cooke used nature-inspired art and recycled items, even a former wine table.
Cooke lives in Buckhead, in what she calls an “eco-cottage,” with her husband, a documentarist for CNN, and their nine-year-old daughter.
How does she stay green? She recycles. She carries her own bag to the grocery store, and she shops locally.
She changes up her furniture with slipcovers. She’s had her house tested for pollutants and had the chemical and air quality improved, and she uses all-natural cleaning products.
