HIS designs are better known for looking good than for their practicality. Now Philippe Starck, the Frenchman who has styled everything from lemon squeezers to luxury hotels, has entered the world of green power, having described 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 £400 to provide a small house with 60% of the power that it needs for heating and lighting.

Its square blade is designed to rotate around the vertical axis when the wind hits, turning a generator in its supporting pole to provide enough electricity to light a home. Starck hailed it as “a sexy object”.

Critics claim that householders will need up to five of the turbines to generate enough power to heat a house. Not everybody likes the look of the turbine, which has been compared with an egg whisk.

Starck’s other environmental designs include an electric car, a solar and hydrogen-powered boat and a solar-panel film to stick over windows. He is making a design-themed reality show for British television.

Alice Rawsthorn, a style commentator for the International Herald Tribune, wrote in the newspaper: “One is that it’s deftly designed, not least because the blades are made of transparent plastic which will be virtually invisible up on the roof.

“Another is that it’s designed by him, and 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.”

Starck, 59, turned to what he describes as “democratic ecology” after claiming that he was tired of producing status-driven material items. He has sold hundreds of thousands of his rocket-like lemon squeezers and nearly 1m of his “ghost” Louis XV chairs made from plastic, but he said earlier this year that he was ashamed that “everything I designed is unnecessary”.

Embracing his new creed, he told the Herald Tribune: “Ecology is not just an urgency of the economy and protection of our world but also creativity and elegance.”

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.

With price increases in gas and electricity pushing the average power bill for a home in Britain to more than £100 a month, doit-yourself power generation is seen as a growing trend. The fact that it claims to save on carbon emissions gives the wind turbine added appeal.

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”. The critic said it appeared expressly designed to spray lemon juice all over the user.

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. “Next he’ll reveal his energy-saving giant lightbulb that will light up a whole neighbourhood.”

Jo Bradley of the Carbon Trust said: “I would love to have a Philippe Starck wind turbine on my home, but the carbon saved may be less than the actual carbon emissions from making the turbine.”

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