These design projects focus on sustainability
Sustainability has arrived at the Milan Furniture Fair. And it's about time. After all, designers should be aware of their social responsibility and role model function.
At this year's "Fuorisalone" exhibitions, I saw numerous design projects that address environmental issues. Through their craft and modern technologies, designers directly influence sustainability. Their projects show how waste, by-products from other industries and naturally growing materials can be turned into environmentally friendly products. I learnt about seven new materials that can be transformed into beautiful objects alongside PET and glass.
Shells
The food industry disposes of tonnes of mussels every year. The shells are not biodegradable. These include the beautiful scallops. After being eaten, they are thrown away. They come in dazzling colours - from light yellow to purple.
In collaboration with the interior studio Nature Squared, designer Bethan Gray has now developed a furniture collection in which she reuses such seafood waste. For example, she uses pink scallop shells and incorporates them into a desk.
The "Sea Stone" design project by Royal College of Art students Hyein Choi and Jihee Moon features a cement-like material made from used shells and natural binders. The new material is used in architecture and furniture production.
Potato peelings
Potato peel is another waste material produced in the food industry. It is mainly produced during the manufacture of French fries. The three students Simone Caronni, Pietro Gaeli and Paolo Stefano Gentile have found a way to produce a fully biodegradable packaging material from the organic peel. In the future, snack bars will serve fries in the potato peel in the form of an ice-cream cone.
Animal blood
Something can be made from leftovers from animal-based industries: Shahar Livne recycles blood that ends up in the sewer in many slaughterhouses when it is not used as colouring for meat. Instead, the designer uses it to colour and soften a leather-like material. To produce the leather itself, animal fat is used as a texturiser and skin and bones, which would otherwise also end up as waste, are used as reinforcing agents. Together with Sebastian Thies, Livne has created the world's first sneaker made from real blood.
Chicken feet
Swiss slaughterhouses burn hundreds of thousands of chicken feet every day if they are not processed into animal feed. Basel students Meret Wacker and Géraldine Heller make leather from the skin of the feet. They are turning chicken skin into a new raw material for product design. Using different patterns, they show what is possible.
Algae
The Algae Lab cultivates living algae, then dries it and processes it into a material that is suitable for 3D printing objects. Among other things, this has resulted in a tableware collection. This is a reproduction of historical glassware from the collection of the Musée Departemental in Arles.
Designer Anya Muangkote has created an illuminated room divider that is partly made from biodegradable components. The partition's bioplastic film is made from agar and glycerine. Agar is a substance obtained from red algae and glycerine comes from plants.
Industrial metal waste
For a series of ceramic tiles, Agne Kucerenkaite collaborated with Dutch soil remediation and water treatment plants. The metal waste from these companies is a treasure in the eyes of the designer. She uses it to colour her ceramics. The raw material she receives contains many metals, which give the ceramic glaze a colour during the firing process.
Waste from the Thames in London
Max Hornaecker transforms rubbish from the River Thames in London into unique objects. Depending on which piece falls into his hands, he decides what it could become. Whether it's a glue roll holder or a cable weight, all the products in the collection have one thing in common: they have brass components that enhance them.
Most of the products in these nine design projects are still in their infancy. I have high hopes that the prototypes will soon go into series production and end up at Galaxus.
Follow me if you want to know if I have come across any other successful work in Milan. Just press the black button on my profile. I look forward to your plan.
Like a cheerleader, I love celebrating good design and bringing you closer to everything furniture- and interior design- related. I regularly curate simple yet sophisticated interior ideas, report on trends and interview creative minds about their work.