uk £10.

00
us $16.99
aus $16.99
cdn $17.99
dkk 129.95
fr €14.0
de €14.90
ita €14.50
jpn ¥2000
sgp $28.50
es €14.00
chf 18.90
aed 85.00

*Architecture � Design � Art � Travel � Entertaining � Beauty & Grooming � Transport � Technology � Fashion � Watches & Jewellery august 2020
AUGUST 2020

Re- think
The Re-Made Issue Design for a Better World

Re- imagine
Re- purpose
Re- connect
Re- engineer
Re- model
Re- Made Design for a Better World
256
CHANEL.com
Tangente Sport. Made in Germany. This automatic timepiece is outstandingly water resistant, exceptionally
robust, and equipped with a NOMOS bracelet. At work inside is the neomatik date caliber, DUW 6101 ,
well-protected by the stainless steel case. Now at select retailers, as well as here: nomos-glashuette.com
 AUGUST
Re- Made
Design for a better world

026 Light installation

Timon & Melchior Grau and Tobias Grau

028 Modular sofa

Muller Van Severen and Kassl Editions

032 Water fountain

Yasmin Bawa and Axor

037 Beauty kitchen

Doshi Levien

038 E-trike and trailer

Konstantin Grcic, Hydro,
Cake and Polestar

042 Food delivery packaging

PriestmanGoode and collaborators

047 Seedling incubator Timon & Melchior Grau preview their lighting installation
for Re-Made with a series of conceptual images, page 026
Phoebe English

047 Scented masks 048 Eco-aware personal care

Ma-tt-er and Ponsont Made Thought

050 Weighted blanket

Studio Ossidiana

053 Urban gardening kit

Piuarch

056 Mycelium packaging

Nina Bruun, Astep
and Grown

058 E-waste watch

Vollebak

061 Uniforms
Roz Barr and Ssōne

Research for Faye Toogood and The Shellworks’ calming lamp,

062 Red mud tiles
with a bioplastic shade made from shellfish waste, page 070 Tonkin Liu and Studio ThusThat

∑ 011
 AUGUST
Re- Think
Researching a better world

082 Formafantasma
Can we make fuller use of ephemeral things?

088 Afterparti
Who holds the power to shape our cities?

094 Paul Dillinger

Is fashion fixable?

098 Map Project Office

Can you create a perfect circle?

102 Fernando Laposse

What’s the problem with crushed avocado?

106 Christien Meindertsma

Can lino live forever?
Among material research in Nina Bruun’s studio, mycelium samples for
her packaging project with Astep and Grown, page 056
110 Nate Petre
Is micro-making the future?
065 Portion plate
Jean-Baptiste Fastrez and Chipsboard 114 Re- Connect
The Wallpaper* Re-Made reading list
065 Compost bin
High Society and Black Cow

066 Hand sanitiser

Odd Matter, Dust London and Kinfill

068 Solar harness

Stefan Diez

070 Calming lamp

Faye Toogood and The Shellworks

072 Shelving system

Asif Khan and BioMason

074 Knife sharpener

Jenkins & Uhnger and Victorinox

076 Textiles and dyes

Formafantasma explores the impact of temporary exhibition design,
Kaiku and SaltyCo here with a repurposable set for the Rijksmuseum, page 082

014 ∑
 Nature. Form ed.
THE MERCY COLLECTION

W W W.G E O R G J E N S E N .C O M

CO P E N H A G E N • STO CK H O LM • LO N D O N • N E W YO R K • SY D N EY • TO KYO • MU N I CH • S I N GA PO R E • TA I P E I
 Wallpaper.com

facebook.com/wallpapermagazine

@wallpapermag

@wallpapermag

Editorial
Editor-in-Chief Architecture / Design Fashion Wallpaper* Digital Contributing Editors
Sarah Douglas
Architecture Editor Fashion Director Digital Director Nick Vinson
Senior Editor Ellie Stathaki Jason Hughes Tilly Macalister-Smith Isabelle Kountoure
Nick Compton Emma O’Kelly
Design Editor Fashion Features Editor Digital Editor
Executive Editor Rosa Bertoli Laura Hawkins Elly Parsons Hugo Macdonald
Bridget Downing Henrietta Thompson
Acting Design Editor Assistant Fashion Market Editor Head of Social Media Suzanne Trocmé
Commissioning Editor Alice Morby Marianne Kakko Fiona Mahon
TF Chan US Editor
Assistant Architecture Editor Fashion Assistant Design Editor, Digital
Executive Assistant Harriet Thorpe Aylin Bayhan Sujata Burman Michael Reynolds
to Sarah Douglas & New York Editor
Special Projects Coordinator Interiors Bookings Editor Arts Editor, Digital
Tracy Gilbert Harriet Lloyd-Smith Pei-Ru Keh
Danaï Loukas
Interiors Director Senior Digital Designer Milan Editor
Art Amy Heffernan Watches & Jewellery Marco Sammicheli
Fraser Clark
Deputy Art Director Interiors Editor Assistant Watches & Junior Digital Designer Paris Editor
Anne-Laure Fuchs Hannah Jordan Jewellery Editor Gabriela Sprunt Amy Serafin
Deputy Interiors Editor Hannah Silver Germany Editor
Designer Digital & Social
Olly Mason Sophie Lovell
Ben Rimmer Transport & Technology Media Coordinator
Junior Designer Interiors Coordinator Katie Meston Madrid Editor
Jacqui Scalamera Transport & Technology Editor Maria Sobrino
Daniel Faltys Digital & Social Media Assistant
Jonathan Bell
Phoebe Gardner Japan Editor
Photography Travel
Production Web Developers Jens H Jensen
Photography Director Travel Editor Aidas Zubkonis China Editor
Lauren Ho Production Editor
Holly Hay Gianluigi Mango Yoko Choy
Anne Soward
Photography Editor Entertaining / Beauty Sub Editor
Singapore Editor
Olivia-Rose Hazeldine Re-Made Coordinator Daven Wu
Entertaining Director Léa Teuscher
Assistant Photography Editor Sophia Acquistapace Australia Editor
Melina Keays
Sophie Gladstone Editorial Assistant Elias Redstone
Beauty & Grooming Editor Diane Theunissen Latin America Editor
Mary Cleary
Pablo León de la Barra
Buenos Aires Editor
Mariana Rapoport

Publishing & Marketing

Managing Director Wallpaper* Digital Advertising Offices Circulation / Subscriptions
Malcolm Young
Digital Project Manager usa china Senior International
Business Director Arti Sisodiya Advertising Manager Advertising Manager Circulation Manager
Kelly Gray Tel: 44.20 3148 7773 Matt Carroll Maggie Li Alice Stilwell
Publishing Assistant Tel: 1.312 420 0663 Tel: 86.10 6952 1122 International Business
Anna Aylward Wallpaper* Bespoke
italy hong kong, taiwan, Development Manager
Advertising Acting Bespoke Director Advertising Manager and korea Laura Gordon
Blue Gaydon Paolo Cesana Advertising Manager
Associate Publisher Herb Moskowitz Finance
Bespoke Director Fashion Executive
Lloyd Lindo Sarah-Jane Molony Antonella Caporale Tel: 852.2838 8702 Management Accountant
Tel: 44.20 3148 7786 Claire Glavin
Bespoke Editor Design Executive thailand
Senior Account Manager Simon Mills Marcella Biggi Advertising Manager
Tom Hemsley Corporate
Christopher Stephen Marsh
Tel: 44.20 3148 7725 Bespoke Art Director Commercial Executive Tel: 66.2 204 2699 Group Managing Director
Daniel McGhee Paolo Mongeri
Global Sales Manager singapore Andrea Davies
Bespoke Producer Tel: 39.02 844 0441
Ben St George Advertising Manager Production Manager
Tel: 44.20 3148 7722 Alex Milnes germany, austria Tim Howat John Botten
Tel: 44.20 3148 7746 and switzerland
Advertising Business Manager Tel: 65.6823 6822
Advertising Manager Digital Product Manager
Amanda Asigno Peter Wolfram india Leonard Burns
Production Controller Tel: 49.89 9611 6800 Advertising Manager Digital Production Manager
Chris Gozzett Rachna Gulati Daniel Short
france Tel: 91.98111 91702
Advertising Manager Sales Director: Content Licensing
Magali Riboud uae & Brand Partnerships
Tel: 33.1 42 56 33 36 Advertising Manager Efi Mandrides
Mamta Pillai
Tel: 971.5035 62723

Editorial Complaints, We work hard to achieve the

highest standards of editorial content, and we are
committed to complying with the Editors’ Code of
Practice as enforced by IPSO. If you have a complaint
about our editorial content, you can email us at
complaints@ti-media.com or write to Complaints
Manager, TI Media Limited Legal Department,
161 Marsh Wall, London E14 9AP, UK. Please provide
details of the material you are complaining about
and explain your complaint by reference to the
Editors’ Code. We will endeavour to acknowledge
your complaint within 5 working days and we aim
to correct substantial errors as soon as possible.
World Headquarters Subscriptions Wallpaper*, ISSN 1364-4475, is published monthly, 12 times a year, by The Wallpaper* Group, a division of TI Media
Limited. © 2020 WaIIpaper* TI Media Limited, 161 Marsh Wall, London E14 9AP, UK. The US annual subscription price is
$190. Airfreight and mailing in the US by agent named Worldnet Shipping Inc., 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica,
161 Marsh Wall Tel: 0330 333 1113 (UK) NY 11434, USA. Periodicals postage paid at Jamaica NY 11431. US Postmaster: Send address changes to Wallpaper*,
Worldnet Shipping Inc., 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA. Subscription records are maintained at
London E14 9AP Tel: 44.330 333 1113 (overseas) WaIIpaper*, TI Media Limited, 161 Marsh Wall, London E14 9AP, UK. Air Business Ltd is acting as our mailing agent. Other
United Kingdom Order online at Wallpaper.com subscriptions rates for Wallpaper* for one year (12 issues), UK £120, Europe €200, and rest of the world £210. For enquiries,
contact help@magazinesdirect.com; alternatively, from the UK call: 0330 333 1113, overseas call: 44.330 333 1113 (lines open
Email: contact@wallpaper.com
Monday-Saturday GMT, 8am-6pm excluding Bank Holidays). Reproduction in whole or in part without written
permission is strictly prohibited. All prices and credits are accurate at time of going to press but are subject to change.
Manuscripts, photos, drawings and other materials submitted must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope. Wallpaper* cannot be held responsible for any unsolicited material. Repro by Rhapsody.
Printed by Walstead Roche.
www.baxter.it
 EDITOR’S LETTER
uk £10.00 uk £10.00
us $16.99 us $16.99
aus $16.99 aus $16.99
cdn $17.99 cdn $17.99
dkk 129.95 dkk 129.95
fr €14.0 fr €14.0
de €14.90 de €14.90
ita €14.50 ita €14.50
jpn ¥2000 jpn ¥2000
sgp $28.50 sgp $28.50
es €14.00 es €14.00
chf 18.90 chf 18.90
aed 85.00 aed 85.00

*Architecture � Design � Art � Travel � Entertaining � Beauty & Grooming � Transport � Technology � Fashion � Watches & Jewellery august 2020 *Architecture � Design � Art � Travel � Entertaining � Beauty & Grooming � Transport � Technology � Fashion � Watches & Jewellery August 2020

Re- think
Re- imagine
Re- purpose
Re- connect
Re- engineer

This magazine is storing approximately 665.19g of CO2

Re- model
Re- Made Design for a Better World
Limited edition cover
by Formafantasma

Design for Life

Newsstand cover Welcome to the August issue, where we introduce Wallpaper* Re-Made – our new flagship Limited-edition cover
Our newsstand cover by Formafantasma
project and an evolution of Wallpaper* Handmade, our decade-long initiative connecting
introduces a mantra for designers, creatives, makers and manufacturers. We have pushed ourselves and our creative The designers’ cover
Wallpaper* Re-Made, features a microscopic
a seven-step programme collaborators to absorb the lessons of decades of activism, environmentalism and view of paper fibres from
towards design for innovation, and to focus more sharply on inspiration and intent. eucalyptus, often used
a better world Last April marked the tenth anniversary of Handmade, and after 587 projects and 1,085 for paper production,
and an estimate of the
collaborators, we had already started planning its evolution. Many times during the past CO2 contained within
year – whether visiting ‘Broken Nature’ at Milan’s Triennale, re-reading Victor Papanek’s each copy of this issue
Design for the Real World (over 20 years since I studied it at university), or talking with of Wallpaper*. Keeping
it longer will postpone
contributors and members of the team, I’ve realised the urgent role that we have to play. the release of CO2
It struck me that Wallpaper* has always stood for Design for Life. The best things into the atmosphere
last a lifetime, accompanying our journeys and enriching our lives. So we shouldn’t simply when it is eventually
incinerated. See more
be making more beautiful things, we should re-examine how, what and why we make from Formafantasma
and consume. on page 082
With Re-Made, we’ve maintained the fundamental premise of Handmade: pairing Limited-edition covers are
the best designers, makers, architects and engineers to create thought-provoking and available to subscribers,
see Wallpaper.com
inspirational projects. Now we’re re-focusing with a greater emphasis on design and
creation that can enrich and endure. And rather than presenting their work up front,
we want to first invite them to share their research and creative process.
And so, in this Re-Made issue, we preview 23 projects that will be shown in Milan
next year, to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Salone del Mobile. They include an
e-trike and trailer by Konstantin Grcic, food delivery packaging by PriestmanGoode,
a shelving unit by Asif Khan, a water fountain by Yasmin Bawa, an urban gardening kit
by Piuarch, and an e-waste watch by Vollebak – all eco-conscious takes on common
typologies. At the moment, they are incubation projects, works in progress, a starting
point for conversation about common problems and possible solutions. And in that spirit,
the dialogues around them will live on after the Milan event, digitally and otherwise,
to spark further ideas and innovations.
We have also invited creatives from different fields who have taken a research-based
approach to current issues affecting the design industry. We will collaborate with these
studios to further expand their work, and present it alongside the 23 projects in Milan.
They include Formafantasma, Christien Meindertsma, Fernando Laposse, Nate Petre
and Map Project Office. Meanwhile, Afterparti, a collective of young BAME architecture
writers, looks at problems of power and representation within urban spaces, and
Paul Dillinger, Levi’s VP of global production innovation, tackles some of the sustainability
issues facing the fashion industry.
I hope Re-Made will strengthen your belief in design as a problem-solving tool for
environmental and social challenges, a driving force for better principles and healthier
behaviours. Design for Life feels like an appropriate – perhaps even overdue – evolution
of Wallpaper’s initial tagline ‘The stuff that surrounds you’. Let’s use this as a platform
to re-think, re-connect and re-make.
Sarah Douglas, Editor-in-Chief

020 ∑
FLAGSHIP STORE - BÄRENGASSE 10 - 8001 ZÜRICH
HIERONYMUS-CP.COM

SCULPTURE PEN | GOLD

„ LACQUER EPITOMISES HISTORY,
CULTURE, AND STYLE;
IT GIVES THE OBJECT DEPTH.“
SEBASTIAN HERKNER

CHAIR 118
SEBASTIAN HERKNER

thonet.de
Re-
Wallpaper* Re-Made is where we bring together the best and
the brightest – designers, architects, artists, technologists,
scientists, makers and manufacturers – to re-think the possible.
It’s a space to imagine ways of making and doing that are kinder,
smarter, cleaner, and less exploitative of people and resources.
It’s been a long time in the making. For the last ten years,
this issue has been a celebration of the Wallpaper* Handmade
exhibition. A showcase for creative collaborations, high craft
and smart engineering, Handmade had a great run and we are
proud of what it achieved. But we knew it was time to push that
model in a new direction and set new challenges.
Re-Made is an ideas lab intent on tackling fundamental
problems: fixing our broken relationship with the things we buy
and use; ensuring they have the longest lives possible, and
short and happy afterlives; limiting the environmental cost of
the way we move and the places we live and work; exploring
the possibilities for circularity in manufacturing and materials;
and providing equitable access to creative education and
professional opportunities.
This issue looks at 23 Re-Made projects that we will present
in Milan next year, during Salone del Mobile. They are works in
progress. There are problems left to solve, processes to devise,
materials to explore, dead ends to back out of, and new routes
to establish. And they make something very clear. There are no
easy wins, no single big fixes. But there are ways to do things
better and the energy, ingenuity and will to try.

Made ∑ 025

When we approached Timon & Melchior
Grau to create a device that would alleviate
seasonal affective disorder, we expected a
lamp. Instead, the brothers went beyond the
call of duty to propose an installation at
our upcoming Milan exhibition, exploring
the emotive and therapeutic qualities of light.
Timon and Melchior are the sons of
designer Tobias Grau, founder of the
eponymous German lighting label. Taking the
creative reins of the family business in 2017,
they’ve since reinvented its visual identity
and picked up a Wallpaper* Design Award for
their first lighting design, the cordless ‘Parrot’
lamp (W*250). But they’re also an artist duo
in their own right, and recently participated
in a group show organised by the Berlin
gallerist Robert Grunenberg. ‘Our art practice
reflects a lot on the influence of design on
026 ∑
humans. In a wider sense, what makes
humans really human is the way we reflect
our environment, and shape it in return.
That’s what design essentially is,’ they say.
The idea of a SAD lamp – which emits a
strong bright light to soothe the winter blues –
had the brothers thinking about fire, a
natural element that was tamed by early
humans to become a source of artificial
lighting. Beyond visibility and warmth, fire
also offers strong emotional connotations:
‘from love and freedom, to power and danger’,
they say. For Re-Made, they are combining
their talents in design and art to create an
installation titled ‘Fire’, using artificial light
sources to convey the same moods as a flame.
Behind this sensorial goal lies a series
of technological challenges, which the
Tobias Grau brand is well placed to take on:
Conceptual images, featuring
and art directed by Timon &
Melchior Grau, offer a preview
of their installation for our
Re-Made exhibition in 2021,
which will explore the emotive
powers of fire and light
expanding the capabilities of LED lighting,
in terms of intensity, colour spectrum and
colour rendering index. Then there are
practical questions to be answered: what sort
of light source, how it’s framed (glass, because
of the role that fire plays in shaping it, but
in what form?), how it’s manipulated, and
whether it responds to the movements of
visitors. On these points, the brothers are
reluctant to divulge details before they’re
further along their design process. They are,
however, unequivocal about their ambition
to inspire awareness of the transformative
powers of light. ‘Light can transform spaces,
so they appear different, so they feel different,
so they react differently to the person inside,’
they conclude. ‘It’s much more than lighting
up a space and enhancing visibility.’ ∂
grau01.com; tobiasgrau.com
 Art

Light

installation
Timon & Melchior Grau’s conceptual
SAD lamp packs an emotional punch
PHOTOGRAPHY: PAUL HUTCHINSON WRITER: TF CHAN
 Design

The sofa, made from Limonta fabric left

over from fashion designs, is light and
easy to move around. Its form, conceived
by Muller Van Severen, is inspired by
Kassl Editions’ bag designs

028 ∑
For a small fashion brand, Kassl Editions
has big ideas. Launched in 2017 – by
fashion agent Bart Ramakers and colleague
Charlotte Schreuder, Antwerp concept store
Graanmarkt 13 founders Tim Van Geloven
and Ilse Cornelissens, and former Delvaux
CEO Christian Salez – the label embraces the
ethos of ‘doing one thing and doing it well’.
Since their first piece, minimalist outerwear
inspired by an old fisherman’s coat, the
founders have been experimenting with
oiled cotton canvas, each season creating
variations on a theme. Then they introduced
padded bags made in an oil-coated cotton
from Italian textile weaver Limonta, left over
from the production of coats (the bags are
now so successful, some fabric also has to be
ordered in to supplement the supply).
The bags became the starting point for
Kassl Editions’ next idea: a multipurpose
piece of furniture with a modular design
made from durable materials. To develop the
concept, Cornelissens and her team enlisted
Belgian design duo Muller Van Severen.
‘Fien Muller and I had been discussing a
collaboration for some time,’ Cornelissens
says. She and Van Geloven had bought the
‘Crossed Double Seat’, from one of the
designers’ early collections, for their home.
The two couples had since become friends,
and Muller Van Severen’s work for Valerie
Objects is available through Graanmarkt 13.
‘After the launch of our bags, we felt it
was time to start thinking about something
in between fashion and interiors,’ continues
Cornelissens. ‘We had a meeting with Fien
and Hannes [Van Severen], and I brought
three bags with me. We were discussing
something modular, something movable,
something easy. The bags were piled in the »

Modular
sofa
Surplus fashion fabric finds
new life in playful seating
by Muller Van Severen and
Kassl Editions
RENDER: FIEN MULLER WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI
 Design
corner of the room and all of a sudden
Hannes started drawing. Like always,
the first idea is the best!’
Based on Van Severen’s sketch, the sofa
(the first by the Belgian studio) is simple in
its execution: it is essentially made of three
bags that attach to each other, forming an
archetypal seat and back structure. The single
module works as a solo seat, or as the starting
point for a composition of multiples.
The leftover Limonta fabric was the start
of the design process. ‘The way the fabric
falls brought us to the idea of this type of
sofa,’ says Muller. It’s the flow of the textile,
she adds, that brings together the worlds
of fashion and design. ‘You want to feel the
fabric, lie in it or even hide in it.’
The modular structure allowed the
designers to play with colour, creating
chromatic compositions in a palette of black,
white and camel, accented with sky blue,
navy, green and bordeaux.
For Cornelissens, the design and concept
embody her idea of a contemporary lifestyle.
‘It feels like something really new,’ she says.
‘You can use this sofa in your home, but also
take it outside and read a book on it.
Functional, comfortable, sustainable and
multi-usable design is future living for me.’
Cornelissens applies the same approach
to Kassl Editions’ fashion line, and believes it
030 ∑ PHOTOGRAPHY: MARTINA BJORN RENDER: FIEN MULLER
Above, a render of the modular design,
which grew from the idea of bags stacked
like cushions to form a seat and a backrest.
The cushions are held together by integral
bands, photographed left, and feature
a playful colour palette, as detailed in the
sketch by Muller Van Severen, below
will find resonance in a post-pandemic world.
‘People have everything and nobody needs
anything, so to evoke desire, you need radical
quality: one item that lasts for a lifetime,’
she says. ‘This is our opportunity to make a
positive change in fashion. We are joining
forces with many others in the industry right
now to set aside previous rules and align our
decisions with our values.’
From a design perspective, Muller shares
this sentiment: ‘We don’t want to make
objects that are being replaced after a few
years. We want to create things that you buy
to keep and pass on to your children.’
The collaboration is now continuing
with a new, even more portable design on
the cards in time for Wallpaper’s Re-Made
exhibition in Milan next April. ‘We would
like to develop something that is light,
easy and usable both indoors and out,’ says
Cornelissens, adding that the team is
experimenting with hammocks and mats.
Meanwhile, the sofa is set to become an
integral part of the Kassl Editions offering.
When asked about a favourite moment in the
project so far, the collaborators mention their
children enjoying the piece, whether they
played with it during development, or tried
it at home. ‘I already miss it, the kids loved it.
That says something to me,’ says Muller. ∂
mullervanseveren.be; kassleditions.com
Design

Water fountain
Artist and designer Yasmin Bawa teams with Axor
to get both sculptural and functional with hempcrete
PHOTOGRAPHY: MARINA DENISOVA WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI
Yasmin Bawa inspects the sculpted curves that house
a spout of her unfinished hempcrete fountain, above.
Its base is made up of various hempcrete components,
seen in progress in Bawa’s Berlin studio, opposite

∑ 033

I
f you know anything about hempcrete, it’s probably
because of Yasmin Bawa. The Berlin-based artist
and designer has become a sort of spokesperson
for the hemp-based composite material, demonstrating
its potential in a quiet but appealing way.
Bawa discovered hempcrete a few years ago and was
instantly hooked. The former accessories designer had
left her job at fashion brand Acne in 2015 to pursue
personal creative projects, moving from Stockholm to
Berlin. ‘I used this time to research what I wanted to
create. What inspired me was this grey zone between
art, sculpture and functional design, creating objects
that fit both the physical and poetic needs of the user.’
She started looking into alternative materials for
sculpting, and discovered hempcrete while researching
house construction online (‘I have larger dreams of
building a house,’ she says). A family had built their
home in hempcrete with pleasing results: ‘The house
itself and the quality of the lime plaster finishes were
just beautiful,’ recalls Bawa.
Hempcrete is a mixture of hemp, one of the world’s
strongest natural fibres, with clay and lime binder.
Industrial hemp (varieties grown for non-drug use)
requires approximately half the water needed to grow
cotton, and its plant absorbs more carbon dioxide
per hectare than trees: an environmental win-win.
Intrigued by hempcrete’s potential and by Bawa’s
monolithic forms, Wallpaper* tasked the designer with
creating a fountain, a sculptural bottle-filling station
made from her signature material. For the technical
expertise to bring the project to life, we called on
water-flow specialist Axor. ‘I saw a great chance for
Axor to feature its competencies,’ says Benjamin
Holzer, the brand’s head of product management. ‘We
liked the sustainability aspect, but also the idea of
designing something meaningful for the future, which
examines our relationship to the objects we use.’
Although Axor is not new to design collaborations – its
collections are created by the likes of Barber Osgerby,
Philippe Starck and Patricia Urquiola – a project with
an up-and-coming creative who had never worked with
water felt at once a challenge and an opportunity. ‘Our
034 ∑
Far left, the fountain is shaped
from hempcrete, a mixture
of the chopped-up core of the
plant and lime, which is then
coated in lime and clay plaster
Left, initial ideas for the piece
include fountains at two
heights, the lower accessible
to wheelchair users
mission was to understand Yasmin’s approach, her
material, her first ideas, and then to see how we could
make that happen with the technology and innovations
we already had available,’ continues Holzer.
His team and Bawa had weekly calls. Bawa’s artistic,
free-form process met Axor’s rigorous approach to
product development. The designer researched
fountains, and the use of communal water pumps in
contemporary communities, both as a way to reduce
plastic waste and as a shared resource. This she
combined with her ongoing research into the sculpture
of Joan Miró, Henry Moore and Danish modernist
Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, among others.
Hempcrete is at the heart of the project. Bawa’s
process mixes hemp shiv (the chopped-up core of the
plant) with lime, then uses this material to hand-build
a structure that, once dry, she covers in a mix of lime
and clay plaster before adding a textured or polished
finish. ‘We were a bit worried in the beginning, because
we didn’t have experience of pairing this material with
water,’ says Holzer. ‘But its natural aspect and its
flexibility triggered our exploratory urge.’
Challenges have included the need to incorporate
very technical elements into the sculptural design, and
the desire to create a piece that is wheelchair accessible.
‘I also realised I wanted to create some features that
would bring a sense of lightness,’ adds Bawa, pointing
to the circular shapes concealing the spouts. The initial
design features two distinct fountains made of stacked
volumes, each with water features at different heights.
Bawa has been experimenting with rough and smooth
finishes. For the final colour, she used waste material
from a local cannabidiol manufacturer, a green powder
she mixed with pigment for a speckled effect.
The piece will be further refined and assessed, with
a functional fountain ready to be used in Milan in April
2021. As the first public drinking station made by Axor,
and perhaps Bawa’s most ambitious project to date,
it not only explores the potential of hempcrete as a
building material, but also gives new, experimental
form to issues of circularity and waste. ∂
yasminbawa.com; axor-design.com
DESIGNED TO
BRING NATURE CLOSER
| BM OUTDOOR SERIES | BØRGE MOGENSEN | 1971

Originally designed for Børge Mogensen’s private balcony, the Outdoor Series
is a testament to the beauty of simple, functional design. Now reintroduced
by Carl Hansen & Søn, the foldable designs in untreated, FSC ® -certified teak
bring lasting beauty to outdoor spaces thanks to their considered combination
of careful craftsmanship and lasting, high-quality materials.
FSC C135991

ABERDEEN: CHAMELEON | BELFAST: LIVING SPACE | BERKSHIRE: BENCHMARK | BIRMING-

HAM: EXISTENZMINIMA, HEALS | BOURNEMOUTH: SO. FURNITURE | BRADFORD: THE HOME
BRIGHTON: HEALS | CAMBRIDGE: EVE WALDRON, TOMAS KITCHEN PLUS | COTSWOLDS:
TREACLE GEORGE | DUBLIN: ARNOTTS, LOST WEEKEND | EAST YORKS: INNES | EDINBURGH:
MOLETA MUNRO, STUDIO ONE FURNITURE | HARROGATE: CIMMERMAN | LIVERPOOL: UTILITY
LONDON: ARAM, CARL HANSEN & SØN FLAGSHIPSTORE, CHAPLINS, DO-SOUTH, HAUS, HEALS, HOLLOWAYS
OF LUDLOW, E_PORTA.COM, SCP, SILVERA UK, SKANDIUM, THE CONRAN SHOP, TWENTYTWENTYONE
MANCHESTER: FERRIOUS | NOTTINGHAM: ATOMIC INTERIORS | SHEFFIELD: NEST.CO.UK, OLSON
AND BAKER | SHEPTON MALLET: BEUT.CO.UK | WEST YORKSHIRE: HEALS
Piazza Borromeo 12 www.antonini.it

Inspired by Ayurvedic
treatments that harness the
cosmetic and nourishing
properties of food, Doshi
Levien’s Beauty Kitchen
encourages the use of readily
available ingredients, tools
and utensils to create
homemade natural skincare
with zero packaging
Beauty
kitchen
Doshi Levien’s homemade
natural skincare
DRAWING: NIPA DOSHI WRITER: SUJATA BURMAN
When Doshi Levien first thought up its
Beauty Kitchen concept, we weren’t using
our homes half as much we have been over
the past months during Covid-19. The
London design studio was keen to re-think
chemically boosted skincare wrapped in
excess packaging, and investigate how we can
use natural ingredients to cut, smash and
grind our own. ‘The idea is more relevant
than it was when we first proposed it for
Re-Made,’ says Jonathan Levien when we talk
on Skype. ‘People are doing more activities at
home, and getting creative with the resources
Wellness
they have. Gardening, in particular, has seen
a boom.’ Inspired by Ayurvedic treatments,
Nipa Doshi has been devising recipes and
formulas that use items like chickpea flour,
turmeric, milk and lemon to create face
masks and scrubs. Kitchen utensils and
locally sourced tools and materials, such as
marble offcuts, can then be used to transform
ingredients into life-enhancing products.
The kitchen becomes not only a place to
prepare food to eat, but also a lab to create
everyday rituals of personal care.
∂
doshilevien.com
∑ 037
This page and opposite,
renders show Grcic’s vision
for the recycled aluminium
Hydro-Truck, as he is
provisionally calling it, a simple
electric trike with a battery set
behind the saddle stem, and a
roomy articulated trailer
 Transport

E-trike and trailer

Konstantin Grcic, aluminium producer Hydro, e-motorbike pioneer Cake and
electric performance car maker Polestar pedal their clean, not-so-mean machine
WRITER: NICK COMPTON

The Covid-19 crisis seems to have put a kink and the first to sign up. We knew scalability has 35,000 employees in 40 countries.
in history, compacted time, accelerated and was vital, that whatever we came up with had Its aluminium can be found in buildings,
re-directed existing trends, prematurely to be possible and viable in many multiples. boats, cars and much more and pretty
Renders: Konstantin Grcic Design

tipped tipping-points. It has made what were
already good ideas more vital and urgent.
Konstantin Grcic’s designs for a new kind of
delivery vehicle – a lightweight, simple,
flexible, super-functional trailer pulled by an
electric trike – is that kind of idea.
When we first started plotting the launch
of Re-Made, Grcic was inevitably among the
first names on our wish list of collaborators,
And Berlin-based Grcic is not just a
premier league product designer, he is an
avowedly industrial designer. Grcic works
with big numbers.
Then we needed a maker, a material and a
process that Grcic could run with. Hydro,
the Norwegian aluminium production giant –
like Grcic, a veteran Wallpaper* Handmade
collaborator – seemed like a good fit. Hydro
much everywhere. It has also been investing
in and developing recycled and lower-carbon
aluminium. Hydro Circal 75R is at least
75 per cent post-consumer scrap. As well
as avoiding the environmental impact of
extraction, the production of recycled
aluminium requires just five per cent of
the energy required for primary aluminium.
(Aluminium recycling is nothing new, of »

∑ 039
 Transport
course. The material can be infinitely
recycled without a loss in quality, and there
was a huge aluminium recycling drive in the
US during the Second World War. It is
estimated that almost 75 per cent of
aluminium ever produced is still in use.)
Unfortunately, there aren’t sufficient
supplies of recycled aluminium to meet
demand. Hydro’s Reduxa primary
aluminium at least has a lower carbon
footprint than the industry average. Carried
out exclusively at Hydro’s Norwegian plants,
which are all run on renewable energy,
the manufacture of Reduxa creates 4kg
CO2-equivalents per kilogram of aluminium,
a quarter of the norm.
Suitably matched, Grcic got to thinking
about what he could do with Hydro’s more
environmentally conscious aluminium. He
was intrigued by a production process called
friction stir welding (FSW), developed in the
UK in the early 1990s and first employed on
an industrial scale by Hydro. The technique
means that two pieces of aluminium alloy
can be fused together by a rotating tool that
creates heat through friction.
‘That was the spark of the idea,’ says Grcic.
‘I’m familiar with an aluminium profile
casting and all that, but I hadn’t heard of
friction stir welding. So I looked into it.
Welding aluminium is not easy because of its
high conductivity. But friction stir welding
manages to keep the heat very local and
creates the right doses of heat for what you
need. So it’s a very precise, very clean way of
bringing aluminium pieces together. And you
don’t get those ugly joins that you have to
live with or machine away.’
‘Every designer I talk to is fascinated
by this technique because it feels like
it just melts the material together,’ says
Hilde Kallevig, Hydro’s head of group brand
and marketing. ‘And, of course, there are
cost benefits, because you don’t have to add
another material, and a sustainability benefit,
because the fewer materials you use, the
easier it is to recycle.’
Now Grcic had to come up with a design
that made good use of that process. ‘Hydro
developed FSW for the shipbuilding industry
in order to create large aluminium platforms,
made up of welded-together profiles. So we
discussed what we could do with that. We
could have taken it to an architectural scale,
but, in the end, we are not architects. So I
thought, OK, let’s design something that is
‘You could deliver
furniture with it or turn
it into an ice cream van
or vegetable stall. It
could be anything really’
smaller than a house but bigger than a piece
of furniture. And aluminium is strong and
lightweight and perfect for vehicle
construction. So we decided to look at the
typology of cargo bikes.’
Grcic started to develop the idea of a
utilitarian electric-powered delivery vehicle,
scaled somewhere between the UPS/Amazon
or similar delivery van and smaller pedal-
powered mobile boxes. His original design –
taking inspiration from the Piaggio Ape,
a three-wheeled minivan first produced in
Italy in 1948 and still in use there and around
the world – was for a single-unit three-
wheeler, made entirely of aluminium profiles,
with pedals up front and batteries connected
to the rear wheels.
Photography: Hydro/Jarle Andersen, Hydro
An updated design separated the
1.6m-long trike and a 2.4m by 1.4m
articulated trailer, with a large battery pack
now housed behind the trike’s saddle stem.
This core design was kept as simple and
economical as possible, though Grcic
imagined that covers for the loading area,
a driver’s cabin, a suspension system and even
solar panels could be added if required.
‘Other people are developing these e-cargo
bike delivery vehicles; DHL and UPS have
 done them, Deutsche Post, too,’ says Grcic.
‘But they are designing them exactly for their
needs. Our idea was to create something
much simpler, more adaptable and not so
purpose-made; to offer a very basic chassis
that people could then play with. And you
could deliver furniture with it or turn it into
an ice cream van or vegetable stall. It could
be anything really.’
We began this project before the Covid-19
crisis. And since then, bicycle sales around
the world have boomed: first as people looked
for ways to take exercise and enjoy roads
emptier of cars and vans than they had been
since the 1950s; and then as a way to avoid
public transport as they slowly returned to
work. And cities, London, New York and
Milan included, have looked at ways to make
the shift to pedal power more permanent
and avoid combustion engines returning to
the streets in the same, if not greater,
numbers than before the crisis. A switch to
electric bikes and light electric vehicles is
seen as central to this cleaner restart for
urban transport. The Hydro-Truck, as Grcic
has provisionally tagged it, suddenly has
fresh and serious momentum.
From the beginning of the project, though,
it was clear that at some point we would need
extra input, expertise and manufacturing
muscle, a company at the forefront of
research and development of battery power
and electric vehicles. We had to develop a
Right, the friction stir
welding of aluminium
at a Hydro facility in
Fingspång, Norway.
Grcic was attracted to
the technique, which
is used to join together
pieces of aluminium
without the need for
filler material and
at a relatively low
temperature, making for
a clean, strong finish
Opposite, aiming to
produce aluminium
as cleanly as possible,
Hydro generates
renewable energy, such
as at its Vigelandsfoss
plant on Norway’s
Otra River, in order to
power its refineries
drivetrain and work out what kind of battery
we would need to pull a fully loaded
Hydro-Truck – and Grcic imagined loads of
somewhere between 200kg and 500kg – up
a hill in San Francisco. We would also need
someone who could help us put a working
prototype together using Hydro’s parts. But
we had what felt like a simple yet compelling
idea, now extra-ripe with promise and
potential. And we used it to pull in not one
but two perfect partners.
Thomas Ingenlath, the former design
chief at Volkswagen and Volvo, is now
CEO of Polestar, Volvo’s standalone
performance electric vehicle brand. He also
studied industrial design alongside Grcic
at the RCA in London. The pair had lost
touch but followed each other’s careers at
a distance. Polestar has also been developing
strategic links with Cake, a maker of
beautifully designed e-bikes and electric
motorbikes, founded in 2016 by Stefan
Ytterborn and, like Polestar, based in
Gothenburg. A serial design entrepreneur,
Ytterborn founded the cycle helmet
company POC, another Wallpaper* favourite,
in 2004. A former Ikea designer, he launched
the design agency Ytterborn & Fuentes in
1996. The agency’s clients included Iittala,
leading to a collaboration with a certain
Konstantin Grcic.
Reintroductions made, it quickly became
clear that there was now a team in place who
were suitably charged up, connected and
qualified to take the idea forward. Talk
quickly turned to gaps in the market, Hydro-
Truck’s potential appeal everywhere from
New York to New Delhi, possible ownership
and rental models, whether the truck needed
pedals, and the possibility that solar panels
could unplug it from the grid.
Ingenlath suggested that a team of
engineers who joined Polestar from its sister
brand LEVC (the London Electric Vehicle
Company, the firm behind the new electrified
black cab) could work with Hydro on the
practicalities of manufacturing. LEVC’s
TX Electric Taxi has an entirely aluminium
frame. Meanwhile, Ytterborn and Grcic could
refine the design and work on developing the
battery and drivetrain.
Hydro-Truck, everyone agreed, could go
places (even if exactly how was still in the
works). ‘There’s a whole casserole full of
good ingredients there that we can use to
create storytelling around the truck,’ says
Kallevig. ‘Now we have to create a prototype
that is affordable, manufacturable and
more sustainable.’
Ytterborn is positive that can happen,
with an eye to Wallpaper’s 2021 exhibition
during Salone del Mobile: ‘I’m absolutely
convinced that we can get to Milan and show
something that makes a difference’.∂
konstantin-grcic.com; hydro.com; ridecake.com;
polestar.com
∑ 041
 Design
A render shows PriestmanGoode’s vision
for the alternative food delivery bag and
re-usable containers, designed using the
studio’s pick of innovative, planet-friendly
materials from a range of collaborators
1. BAG LID
IN PIÑATEX, BY ANANAS ANAM
Ethical entrepreneur and Ananas Anam founder
Dr Carmen Hijosa developed this natural,
non-woven substrate made from an existing
by-product of pineapple agriculture – pineapple
leaf fibres. Piñatex, which has already been
used widely in the fashion industry, not only
provides a viable, pliable, breathable and
water-resistant alternative to leather, but also
offers a second stream of income for those
working in pineapple agriculture.
ananas-anam.com
4. FOOD CONTAINER STRUCTURE
IN COCOA_001, BY PAULA NERLICH
Using circular design principles, Berlin-based
designer Paula Nerlich demonstrates how food
production surplus can be used as a resource
for new products. Her Cocoa_001 bioplastic is
created with vegan and biodegradable materials,
including 50 per cent from industrial chocolate
production waste, and is water-repellent and
washable. For this project, Nerlich has also
explored using other food production waste,
such as potato peel and avocado seeds.
paulanerlich.com
2. HANDLES FOR FOOD
CONTAINERS AND BAG
IN LEXCELL, MADE WITH YULEX,
BY EUPHOAM
Developed by US company Euphoam as an
alternative to environmentally hostile neoprene,
Lexcell is a high-performing, plant-based
material, often used for sports items, from yoga
mats to wetsuits. The closed-cell foam – created
by purifying natural rubber in a process called
Yulex – is laminated in fabrics made from
recycled yarn using water-based adhesive.
euphoam.com; yulex.com
5. INSULATION
IN MYCELIUM, BY TYˆ SYML
This experimental Cardiff-based design studio
seeks responsible solutions to ever-increasing
packaging waste. Created using the root system
of mushrooms combined with waste such as
wood chips, brewers’ spent grain, textiles and
paper, its mycelium is a strong, lightweight,
100 per cent natural, recyclable and fully
compostable material. For this project, the
studio is developing a mycelium alternative
to Styrofoam, with thermal properties.
tysyml.co.uk
3. BAG STRUCTURE
IN NUATAN, BY CRAFTING PLASTICS STUDIO
To create its oil-free bioplastic, interdisciplinary
designers Crafting Plastics Studio, based
between Berlin and Bratislava, collaborated with
the Slovak University of Technology and research
company Panara. Nuatan, as the material is
called, can withstand temperatures of more
than 100°C, is highly durable and can fully
biodegrade in industrial compost with no
microplastic residue.
craftingplastics.com
6. CLING FILM
IN DESINTEGRA.ME, BY MARGARITA TALEP
The Chile-based designer has created an
alternative to single-use plastics using agar, a
polysaccharide extracted from red algae. Using
an all-natural composite including extracts from
the skin of discarded fruit and vegetables, the
material can be tailored to create both rigid and
elastic structures. It takes three to four months
to degrade, without the need for industrial
composting. Here, it will be used like cling film,
pressed between containers to keep food fresh.
margaritatalep.com
 Food delivery
packaging
PriestmanGoode puts material responsibility on the menu
and recruits like minds to re-think the future of the takeaway
WRITER: HARRIET LLOYD-SMITH
Food takeaway deliveries have boomed in the past
decade. With smartphone apps came a seamless,
centralised formula of on-demand buffets at home,
and a small army of box-bagged, traffic-dodging
deliverers mobilised at the tap of a screen. A report
released in 2019 valued the global online food
delivery and takeaway market at over $53bn.
With convenience, rapidity and choice came
another ingredient: plastic, and lots of it, from boxes,
to cutlery, down to sachets of sauce. But the
intensifying war on waste has brought mumblings
of change. The takeaway titans are beginning to vie
for a slice of sustainable pie – Deliveroo has launched
an eco-friendly packaging range, and Just Eat is
trialling a seaweed-lined container.
In its aptly-titled ‘Zero’ concept for Wallpaper*
Re-Made, London-based industrial design agency
PriestmanGoode hasn’t just brought a new box to
the table. In collaboration with a series of sustainable
material partners, it has devised a holistic solution
to re-think the entire takeaway food delivery system,
aiming to change consumer behaviour through
circular design, and to make packaging desirable,
not disposable.
PriestmanGoode is no stranger to confronting
pressing and complex design challenges. Since its
conception in 1989, its portfolio has included aircraft
interiors, high-speed trains, small-scale consumer goods
and future-thinking projects that focus on accessibility
and sustainability. And the Re-Made project is not its
first foray into more responsible food ware. Earlier this
year, the designers bagged a Wallpaper* Design Award
Render: PriestmanGoode
for ‘Get Onboard’, an in-flight meal tray solution to
curb plastic waste (W*251). ‘We always used to think
about design as user-centric, and increasingly it’s
becoming planet centric, too,’ says Jo Rowan, associate
director of strategy at PriestmanGoode. ‘People are
increasingly concerned and conscious about their
environmental habits and we felt design had a place
to explore a different behaviour.’
The ‘Zero’ concept comprises a range of reusable,
planet-friendly food containers and a delivery rider
bag. For PriestmanGoode, it wasn’t about finding
one material that could do everything, but the most
suitable food-safe plastic alternatives for each element.
After rigorous research, the team settled on a menu
of six materials, each handpicked for their attributes,
from transit durability to temperature control.
‘Our criteria were that the materials either came
from renewable sources, or were composed of by-
products and would be biodegradable, commercially
compostable or reused,’ says Maria Kafel-Bentkowska,
head of colour, materials and finish at PriestmanGoode.
‘When you list all the properties that you need, the
materials kind of select themselves.’
The delivery bag, which will niftily attach to the
rider’s bike, will be formed of bio-based, 100 per cent
renewable raw resources made by Crafting Plastics,
a Berlin and Bratislava-based design studio that
specialises in the development of bioplastics. The bag
has been designed to withstand high temperatures and
the impact of being dropped. Its lid is to be made using
Piñatex, a natural leather alternative comprising
cellulose fibres from pineapple leaves, developed by
London-based Ananas Anam. Handles will be produced
in Lexcell, made with Yulex, a plant-based neoprene
alternative developed by US company Euphoam.
The bag contains a compact stack of cylindrical,
tiered, bento-style food boxes. These slick, ribbed,
dishwasher-proof dishes – including a pizza box – will
be composed of a bioplastic designed by Berlin-based
Paula Nerlich using by-products from the chocolate
production industry, and can be arranged to suit
quantity requirements. The containers stack, meaning
fewer lids are required, and a smaller amount of
packaging overall. These slot neatly into lightweight »
∑ 043
 Design
mycelium insulators, which will be created by Tŷ Syml,
an experimental design studio based in Cardiff, from
industrial waste. The team also selected material
designer Margarita Talep, who will create an algae-
based alternative to single-use plastics (such as cling
film) to prevent leaks and spills and keep food fresh.
This closed-loop system applies not only to the
materials, but to the entire takeaway process. Once
customers have finished with their packaging, it can
be washed and returned to the food provider for a
second, industrial, food-safe clean before being looped
back into the system.
But circularity presents its own set of challenges
in the wake of Covid-19 and, for the foreseeable future,
hygiene and safety will top the food sector agenda.
Though this project was conceived before the
pandemic took hold, PriestmanGoode has focused
on how to adapt its project to the new reality without
losing sight of the core goal. The team have been
in conversations about creating planet-friendly
antimicrobial coatings to apply to materials to enhance
safety. ‘We cannot focus on hygiene at the expense
of the environment; the two things have to go hand
in hand,’ says Rowan.
‘Zero’ also brings a solution to the historically
less-than-sightly takeaway packaging aesthetic. ‘This
was about creating something that felt more like dishes
you have in a restaurant and can use to display food,’
says Rowan. ‘Something that can contribute to a sense
of occasion, that is beautiful, practical and sustainable.’
‘We cannot focus on hygiene at the expense of the
environment; the two things have to go hand in hand’
044 ∑ PHOTOGRAPHY: CAROLYN BROWN
Sketches, prototypes and
material samples are perused
at PriestmanGoode. The
containers are intended to
stack, meaning fewer lids
will be needed, and to look
appealing to serve and
display food on the table
But aesthetics alone aren’t enough to re-think a single-
use plastic culture. Rewards and penalties – the carrot
and the stick – could be vital to success, recent history
has proved. Think the reusable cups’ discount at major
coffee chains, exchanging plastic bottles for travel credit
on the Rome Metro or even the 5p (and subsequently
10p) plastic bag charge brought into England in 2015,
which reduced plastic bag consumption by 90 per cent.
‘It’s not just that it’s 5p; it’s the guilt. It’s the mindset
of being penalised for something,’ says Rowan.
Incentives are built into the ‘Zero’ concept.
Customers will pay a ‘sustainability deposit’ upon
ordering food, which will be reimbursed once containers
are returned to the delivery service. There will be a
reward scheme – such as discounts on future orders –
for those returning packaging. ‘One of the drivers of this
project was looking at the monetary value of recycling
culture in European countries. That’s a system that has
worked well in incentivising people to think about the
way they dispose of or reuse things,’ says Rowan.
There is no doubt that the takeaway food delivery
sector needs to wrap its mind, and packaging, around
a new system. A meal may take 30 minutes to arrive,
but the plastic it includes may take up to 1,000 years to
disappear. A circular concept like ‘Zero’ may just be an
answer for takeaway food deliveries and beyond. It’s a
chance to call last orders on an industry whose plastic
use is nearing its expiry date, and offer a formula its
users will want to bring to the table. ∂
priestmangoode.com
 * Founded in St-Tropez in 1971

Fondé à St-Tropez en 1971*

This detail leaves
no traces.
Only shine.
Do sparkling glasses make your day brighter?
The Adora dishwasher with SteamFinish creates a perfect
shine without any water marks. Details make the difference.
Learn more at vzug.com

Swiss perfection for your home

 Design

Seedling
incubator
Phoebe English turns from
fashion to food production
With her namesake label, fashion designer
Phoebe English has ambitions to shift from
merely sustainable design to regenerative
design, to create self-replenishing systems of
production. For Wallpaper* Re-Made, she
brought this circular approach to the concept
of a seedling incubator, ‘a space that can grow
plants for consumption, with a self-watering
and a self-heating system’, she says. It will be
built from glass and metal, materials that can
be repurposed multiple times. ‘As a clothing
label, our priority is to use material from non-
virgin sources. I hope we can build that into An initial sketch of
this project.’ The incubator offers a tool for English’s glass and
greater autonomy, and the hope of a gradual metal ‘self-contained
growing space’, with
migration from wasteful, unsustainable adjustable windows
food supply systems. phoebeenglish.com
∂ for air circulation

Scented
masks
Ma-tt-er and Ponsont create
a fragrant boost to wellbeing
Seetal Solanki, founder of London-based
material research design studio Ma-tt-er,
and Justin Vaughan, of scented paper brand
Ponsont, have used innovative materials
and fragrances to transform the face mask,
currently a symbol of illness and anxiety,
into an object of tranquillity and beauty that
aims to help the user navigate the future. The
masks come in three ‘archetypes’, to be worn
in succession to inspire a meditative journey.
‘The Oracle’, in biodegradable coconut leather
and coated in jasmine sambac absolute,
Material research for cotton cord and
the masks includes, natural rubber, coconut
prepares you for new experiences. It’s followed
clockwise from top leather (multicoloured), by ‘The Cartographer’, formed of fractionated
left, bioplastic, coconut pineapple leather oils, and finally ‘The Composer’, a mixture
leather (beige, beneath), (cream), lupine of natural and synthetic scents to ‘recompose’
tree bark, coconut fibreboard, and, centre,
leather (maroon), casein and chalk plaster, your mind into a peaceful state.∂
pineapple leather (grey), and denim offcuts ma-tt-er.org; ponsont.com

WRITERS: DIANE THEUNISSEN, MARY CLEARY ∑ 047

 Design
Create a more desirable future. Fast. This
is the aim of London-based creative collective
Made Thought. When Wallpaper* invited
the studio to work on a project that re-thinks
how we recycle, we did not expect it would
come up with a fully fledged brand, aimed
at transforming how we consume in our
everyday lives. But Made Thought’s talent lies
in creating and developing brands, so it was
natural that they would take this approach.
‘We see this as an opportunity to reinvent
systems,’ says co-founder Ben Parker. His
goal when he started Made Thought with
Paul Austin in 2000 was to bring together
intelligent thinking and beautifully crafted
design, which his team has done for clients
such as MoMA, Adidas and GF Smith. Over
the years, Made Thought has also developed
a decisive environmental slant, working with
clients that have a focus on circularity and
new systems (most recently with campaign
organisation A Plastic Planet). The studio
hired a sustainability advisor in 2019.
For Wallpaper* Re-Made, the team are
focusing on reinventing the personal care
space. They started by creating a B Corp
(something they now advise all their clients
to work towards) as ‘a ready-to-go brand that
delivers a system’. Their idea is to develop
ecologically responsible versions of products
people use every day. ‘The first thing we do in
the morning is head to the bathroom, where
we have a plethora of stuff that goes into the
bin,’ says Parker. ‘The whole lot is moments
away from ending up in landfill.’ Eco-friendly
products shouldn’t be a privilege but a basic
necessity, he adds, so the team will make
the brand accessible in terms of distribution
and a price. ‘This way, the customer has no
choice but to make a better choice.’
Eco-aware
personal care
Creative collective Made Thought conceives
a new brand to inspire better choices
WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI
048 ∑
Called Common Good, the brand is framed
within the studio’s newly formed Made
Thought Labs, a division aimed at breaking
industry conventions – working immersively
on new brands and products, as well as
collaborating with well-established
corporations, not just from an aesthetic
perspective, but re-thinking and re-inventing
their business models to make positive
change through creativity. ‘Our power lies
in behavioural change, how we can influence
people,’ says Parker.
Common Good’s ecosystem of personal
care items includes the razor (one of the
most evil bits of disposable plastic we use),
waterless handwash and toothpaste, solid
shampoo, hand cream, deodorant and
feminine care. The brand will also be
genderless, eschewing what they observe to
be the industry’s appalling (and very dated)
gender bias. Every element will be created
responsibly; materials will be biodegradable
and include permanent containers for refills.
The most important element of Common
Good is its accessibility. ‘If we influence
people in the way they do things every day,
we can encourage change,’ says Parker.
The brand is not so much focused on the
products themselves or their design
(created to be ‘differently familiar’), but on
communicating the key ideas behind its
launch. So as a starting point, the team have
created the graphic seen here, serving as an
advertisement of sorts that clearly illustrates
the thinking behind the concept.
‘We are consciously trying to bring
this into mass appeal,’ says Parker. ‘Our
energies should be used to make more
impact on the world.’ ∂
madethought.com
 Widely endorsed by the medical community interested in their possible role helping with

Weighted as a tool for aiding sleep and encouraging

relaxation among people with autism and
ADHD, weighted blankets have become
insomnia and reducing stress. ‘At the same
time, we began to think of the blanket as a
sort of nomadic house, a thing of comfort

blanket
Studio Ossidiana explores
feathering future nests with
new forms of covering
PHOTOGRAPHY: SZE-WING CHAN WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI
increasingly popular for their purported
therapeutic effects. Keen to explore this
further and create our own version, we called
upon the Rotterdam-based Studio Ossidiana,
founded in 2015 by Giovanni Bellotti and
Alessandra Covini. Working across multiple
scales, they like to blur the boundary between
architecture, design and art, ‘focusing on the
materiality of things, but bearing in mind the
larger narratives, politics and geographies
they reflect’. Their projects create alternative
worlds through multisensory landscapes, as
seen in a recent playground for a school in
Utrecht, or their multiple habitats for birds.
Bellotti and Covini started researching
weighted blankets, becoming particularly
you can carry with you,’ says Bellotti.
In addition to being well-versed in
architectural structures and solid material
design, the pair also have recent experience
working with textiles, including a colourful
installation at Villa Necchi Campiglio in
Milan, and a research project working on a
solar textile prototype. The blanket, they
say, was a great way to further develop the
thinking behind the latter project.
‘We began by thinking of the two “scales”
of the blanket: as the most intimate interior,
the most comfortable retreat, and also the
textile itself as a potential home, rolled out as
a surface for a picnic, or folded into a canopy
or tent,’ says Bellotti. They also explored

050 ∑

This page, Studio Ossidiana’s weighted
textile can be used as a blanket, worn as a
dress, or folded to create a canopy or tent
Opposite, the studio took inspiration from
a variety of sources, including The Magic
Flute‘s Papageno, Sioux teepees, Ottoman
tent palaces, and a timber-shingled shelter
designed by Toyo Ito and Maki Onishi
‘We began to think of the blanket as a sort of nomadic
house, a thing of comfort you can carry with you’
new material possibilities for the blanket:
weighted blankets are normally filled with
glass or plastic beads, and the pair took that
as a point of departure. ‘We could use seeds
to add weight, imagining it as a sort of garden
you can sleep in,’ says Bellotti.
In the studio, Bellotti and Covini started
prototyping with small paper and textile
models, creating origami folds and testing
the various shapes’ resistance and stiffness.
The weights are contained within a series of
textile shingles covering the blanket surface,
exposing the piece’s normally hidden powers.
Reference material for the blankets
included Sioux teepees, Lina and Adolf Loos’
bedroom, a timber-shingled shelter designed
by Toyo Ito and Maki Onishi, and Papageno,
the feathered birdcatcher from The Magic
Flute. Through experimenting with shapes,
the blanket slowly took on a dual narrative:
on one hand, it became a bird-like livery,
with the shingled surface mimicking a coat
of feathers to wear around the body. On
the other, the same surface was a nod to
buildings’ roofs and façades, the blanket
becoming almost architectural in ambition.
The project developed into ‘something
between a dress and a home’. This dual
identity was shaped, or at least sharpened,
by domestic life during the Covid-19 crisis,
‘a time in which our homes were becoming
both precious and public, as our existences
migrated online and our interiors were
increasingly shared with others’, says Bellotti.
These new levels of seclusion and digital
scrutiny created a different focus for the
project, ‘the blanket as an intimate space,
and as a threshold to the outside world’.
While developing the narrative behind
the object, the two have also been working
Wellness
to perfect its technical side, studying
weight distribution, durability and ease of
use in its multiple functions. In the coming
months, the designers will further develop
the piece, working with material and
manufacturing collaborators to bring their
vision to life. ‘We are interested in working
with seeds and materials of a horticultural
nature – this will come through in our
choice of pigments for colouring,’ say the
pair, who frequently experiment with spices
and other organic powders.
‘Environmental concerns are not an issue
that we can choose to address or not – they
form a cultural and tangible backdrop to
everything we do,’ concludes Bellotti. ‘We
find that the most impactful way to address
this is to address the material culture of our
projects, almost as a project in itself.’
∂
studio-ossidiana.com

Urban gardening kit
Milan studio Piuarch moves from green roofs to a multipurpose module
for city dwellers, offering planting, workstation and wellness space in one
Milan has long been a city of secret gardens. In this
dense, industrial, grande dame of a metropolis,
composed of large apartment blocks and walled-off
palazzos, one of the great joys of wandering aimlessly is
accidentally discovering the planted clearings and
courtyards that offer respite from its fabricated scenery.
Photography: © Daniele Cavadini, Matteo Carassale
Still, many such green spots remained private and
off-limits to most until recently, when more parks and
community vegetable gardens slowly started to make
an appearance. Milan Green Week in 2019 and local
organisations such as Clever Cities and RoofMatters
have been helping to foster sustainable practices in the
city, including a culture of green roofs.
Brera-based architecture studio Piuarch has been
cultivating its own planted roof since 2015, titled
Garden Among the Courtyards – enhancing liveability,
wellbeing and social relations for both employees and
the local neighbourhood. Directors Germán
Fuenmayor, Gino Garbellini, Monica Tricario and
WRITER: ELLIE STATHAKI
Architecture
Francesco Fresa believe that while the design Among Piuarch’s previous
community is aware and engaged in the dialogue about urban gardening initiatives
is Garden Among the
creating more green space in their city, there’s still Courtyards, created in 2015
much to do. ‘It is not only about urban planning but on the studio’s own rooftop in
also about subverting social, cultural and educational Milan. A modular system of
pallets makes for a network of
policies within the city and people,’ says Fresa.
pathways and wider spaces,
Their Re-Made response? An urban gardener’s planted with vegetables, fruit,
survival kit, conceived as a design object that bridges aromatic plants and flowers
functionality and aesthetics, while providing a much-
needed horticultural solution for city dwellers with no
access to green spaces. The aim is to develop ‘a modular
totem of urban agriculture for individuals living in
cities’, explains Fresa. ‘The module combines multiple
functions, becoming a sort of multi-tool, a place to
read, work, meditate, listen to music and work out.’
The practice is no stranger to exploring the
environmental and social aspects of architecture. ‘For
us, the very concept of sustainability has many different
meanings, not only in terms of energy and preserving »
∑ 053
 Architecture
the environment, but regarding landscape and social
elements, too,’ says Fresa. ‘That is why cities have kind
of lost their sense of place in their attempt to be
smarter than ever. They are losing contact with both
the human and the natural dimensions.’
The team has been involved in a variety of projects
around urban agriculture and sustainable food
production. Examples include the vegetable garden on
their own green roof, conceived as an ecosystem that
fosters biodiversity, improves the food supply chain and
guarantees quality products; Espaço, a 2018 installation
in São Paulo, aimed at restoring neglected urban areas
and empowering the local community, especially
children, involving them in play-training and food
gardening activities; and Synergy Gardens, a 2018
network of urban edible gardens on rooftops of
Chicago Public Schools, in the so-called ‘food deserts’,
low-income neighbourhoods with limited access to
nutritious food. For Piuarch, this Re-Made project is
part of a wider discourse about reimagining cities and
envisioning a more sustainable future for all.
‘The kit aims at creating a domestic Eden to grow
plants and bring nature back into people’s lives, as well
as taking care of wellbeing, and fostering healthy and
enriching activities in a small place. It’s a sort of
cabinet for multiple uses,’ says Fresa. ‘While we all
Piuarch has devised a blueprint for urban
gardeners that embraces multiple functions.
Solar power and a charging pad mingle
with planting space in the fold-out module
SOLAR PANEL
SOUND AMPLIFIER
TOOL STORAGE
LIGHT
TABLE AND OFFICE TOOLS
DRINK STAND
054 ∑
agree on the benefits of open-air activities and
consuming healthy organic food, we also know that not
everyone living in big cities is able to do that on a daily
basis. It can be an issue of time, space, money or the
recent pandemic.’
While the project was developed before Covid-19
hit, the Milan-based team’s recent experience of
lockdown has given the concept – a product to improve
small-space living – new meaning and importance. ‘It
can become a powerful tool,’ points out Fresa.
The kit comes as a simple, totem-like piece of
furniture, which unfolds into a little garden, complete
with hydroponic system and solar panels, a table, seats,
telephone charger pad, sound amplifier and yoga mat
station. Inspiration came from multifunctional objects
that transform to accommodate a range of uses, and
even the efficiency of the old-school one-man band.
The team are on the hunt for the right manufacturing
partner, and they say that options such as recyclable
biocomposite plastics or timber, or even renewable,
intelligent packaging material, are appealing to explore.
‘Everyone should have a rooftop garden, everyone
should be able to enjoy the benefit of urban agriculture,’
concludes Fresa. ‘It is challenging, pleasant and helps to
raise awareness of food and ecological choices.’ ∂
piuarch.it
WIND INDICATOR
HYDROPONIC SYSTEM
LIBRARY
SEAT
Image: © Piuarch
WORKOUT TOOLS
 Your style. Always.
Pick a cuff and effortlessly swap the colorful
inlays to match your every moment.

Made in Germany Jewelry for him, her & everyone else nyyukin.com

Design
Mycelium
packaging
Designer Nina Bruun shapes biotech firm
Grown’s mushroom-based material
for the safe carriage of Astep lighting
PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKKEL VIGHOLT PETERSEN WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI
One of the key aims of Wallpaper* Re-Made
is to re-think the way we consume, and
packaging is a crucial link in this story. Last
year, a chat with Alessandro Sarfatti led to a
discussion about what he perceived to be an
important problem. Coming from a family of
lighting experts (he is the grandson of design
legend Gino Sarfatti, of Arteluce, see W*218,
and son of Luceplan founder Riccardo
Sarfatti), and founder of a lighting brand
himself, he is well aware of the amount of
plastic needed to transport lighting pieces.
Sarfatti, who used to be CEO of Luceplan,
founded Astep in 2014, intent on creating
lighting products with contemporary designs
and innovative technologies to improve our
domestic experience and quality of life.
This included a sophisticated approach to
sustainability, both with new products and,
in partnership with Flos, reissues of his
grandfather’s work. ‘While giving Astep a
sustainable focus, I had identified packaging
as one of the main problems,’ says Sarfatti.
He had already started changing things –
using jute instead of plastic bags to protect
some glass elements, for example – but to
ensure safe delivery of fragile pieces, the bulk
of the packaging is still made up of plastics,
including polystyrene foam.
The fungus-based material mycelium
seemed to be an ideal alternative to fossil-
based plastics, and a collaboration as part
of Wallpaper* Re-Made offered the perfect
opportunity to address a bad habit. So we
connected Sarfatti with Dutch mycelium
expert Jan Berbee, of biotechnology company
Grown. Then Danish designer Nina Bruun
joined to develop practical, plastic-free
packaging for two pieces from Astep’s
collection: ‘Model 2065’, a hanging light
Left, Nina Bruun’s sketches for
the packaging design, and
mycelium samples from Grown
Below and far right, Bruun
works with product designer
Reeta Laine at her studio
to determine the packaging
requirements for Astep’s
‘Model 2065’ lamp by
Gino Sarfatti
Centre, from top, elements
of the mycelium packaging
and the ‘Model 2065’ light;
once the lighting has been
transported safely, the team
envisage individual elements
being repurposed as planters,
for example, or used as a
fertiliser; further examples
of mycelium packaging for
the ‘Model 2065’ and a new
light by Francesco Faccin
with a glass lampshade (a 1950s Gino Sarfatti
design and the company’s bestseller); and
a new piece by Francesco Faccin, due to be
launched later this year.
But first, the science bit: mycelium (the
roots of mushrooms) is fed agricultural waste,
growing in a mould of the desired shape.
Once the mould is filled (in four to five days),
the form is baked to kill the roots, resulting
in a sturdy, durable and solid volume. Berbee
highlights its benefits: it has insulating and
fire-retardant properties, is lightweight,
shockproof, strong and abundant. What’s
more, every kilogram of mycelium traps
1.7kg of CO2 during the growth stage.
Manufacturing 1kg of polystyrene produces
3kg of CO2. So mycelium is the perfect
candidate for the packaging of the future.
Mycelium produced by Grown for
packaging is already used by skincare brand
 Hæckels (see W*251). ‘Hæckels’ packaging
proves that our product can be used in a real-
life environment; it reduces CO2 and the use
of plastic by embracing nature’s intelligence,’
says Berbee, who helped to guide Bruun in
her design experiments with mycelium.
‘It’s always interesting to explore new
materials that enable more sustainable
design,’ says Bruun. ‘One of the best parts
[of my job] is to get wiser by working with
experts in the field.’ The designer started
Renders: Nina Bruun Design Studio
growing samples in her Copenhagen studio,
testing it to understand its behaviour and
potential. Rather than simply working with
a finished material, she was figuring out the
possibilities and limitations of the process.
‘We aimed to make packaging consist
of as little material as possible, to ensure
less waste,’ Bruun says. She and her team
considered not only the protection and
transport of Astep’s product but the life of
the packaging afterwards. The containers
may be reused as plant pots, for example,
or, once discarded, mycelium is a natural
fertiliser. ‘It was important to us that our
design enabled and encouraged this use. We
wanted to make it as easy as possible to use
the mycelium for [growing] plants, and we
came up with concepts that supported that.’
The design of the packaging highlights the
living nature of mycelium and its ability to
take on organic forms. From Bruun’s designs,
Grown is creating moulds for the mycelium.
‘Because the material is “alive” during the
making of the packaging, there will be some
unknown factors right up until we receive
the prototype,’ says Bruun.
‘Nina approached the problem with a
designer’s rationality, which I really liked,’
says Sarfatti. ‘She studied our product while
learning from Grown. Working on this
project felt like proper design development.’
The packaging solution is looking to be a
good fit for Astep’s upcoming lighting release
by Faccin, Sarfatti adds. And while the slow
growth of mycelium may make it impractical
for use at a larger scale, if the final tests in the
design lab go well, Sarfatti will start testing
the new packaging in the field.
‘We’ve learned so much by working with
mycelium: we’re thrilled to see how organic
materials are starting to reach a point where
they can be used for mass production,’ says
Bruun. ‘Of course, there’s still room for
improvement. But we sincerely hope that it
will be more accepted, valued and used in
the future. The more we work with materials
like this, the easier the process of making
and using them will be.’ ∂
ninabruun.com; astep.design; grown.bio
∑ 057
 E-waste
watch
Future clothing brand Vollebak’s
electronic garbage watch offers a timely
solution to a mounting problem
PHOTOGRAPHY: SUN LEE WRITER: NICK COMPTON
Vollebak was launched in 2016 by high-adventuring
twin brothers Nick and Steve Tidball (see W*205).
Former TBWA creatives, and committed
ultramarathoners, the Tidballs test, trial and develop
clothing for extreme conditions, and credit the Special
Forces, space exploration, neuroscience, conceptual
art, philosophy and material technology as key
influences on product development. A commitment
to creating more sustainable gear has also been there
from the start. During design and production, the pair
found themselves consciously asking, ‘What’s the
longest-lasting piece of clothing you could possibly
create?’ and ‘What piece of clothing can disappear
fastest when it’s buried in the earth?’ Now they are
building their brand around those challenges.
Their output is roughly split into two categories.
There is the everyday (if your everyday involves
exploring very hostile terrain) utilitarian gear, made
using ceramics and carbon fibre. And then there is
the more experimental, conceptual, future-focused
offering, which includes the glow-in-the-dark Solar
Charged Jacket, the Deep Sleep Cocoon, the just-
released Full Metal Jacket (three years in the making
and made from 65 per cent recycled copper, it promises
disease-resistant qualities), and the Plant and Algae
T-Shirt (‘part T-shirt, part worm food’). ‘Clothing is
essentially going to become physical enhancement,’
says Steve. ‘This is what unifies our two strands of
clothing. One is physical enhancement today, and
one is the building blocks for the future.’
We wanted to push the brothers even deeper into
unexplored territories. We threw them the Re-Made
brief and suggested a watch design as a suitable
challenge. Nick noted, ‘There was a line in the brief
about “reimagining the many and useful lives and
afterlives of beautiful objects, tools and buildings”.
058 ∑
The ‘Garbage Watch’, above
and opposite, would be
composed from materials
‘urban mined’ from e-waste
sites in places such as Guiyu
in Guangdong, China, and
Agbogbloshie in Ghana.
Materials used include gold,
silver, platinum, palladium,
copper and aluminium,
extracted from circuit boards,
computer chips, wiring
and cables, while the design
language references the
inside-out construction
of the Centre Pompidou
in Paris, below left
And that drove me to think about all the unwanted
stuff that exists in the world. Then I remembered this
feature I’d seen about mountains of electronic waste.’
Only 20 per cent of electronics are recycled at the
moment. And more than 50 million tonnes of e-waste is
produced every year. The average smartphone contains
60 elements, including gold, silver, platinum and
copper, and it’s estimated that a tonne of Apple iPhones
would deliver 300 times more gold than a tonne of gold
ore. But though valuable, it is also dangerous. E-waste
represents only two per cent of solid waste in landfill,
but accounts for 70 per cent of its hazardous material.
The World Economic Forum has suggested that
developing a safe, profitable method of ‘urban mining’
e-waste sites for metal extraction could be part of a
much wider strategy for dealing with the problem. And
the push for that could be in establishing new value
chains for e-waste materials. The ‘Garbage Watch’
could be a way to make that happen. The watch’s design
language – mechanical and collectible rather than
digital and disposable – is what Nick calls ‘ultra-visible
functionalism’, referencing the proudly out-there pipes
and services of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The idea
is to celebrate the potential of e-waste materials and
forge a new kind of momentum around its reuse. ‘If you
can create the tiniest new kind of demand, then
perhaps you can create a ripple effect,’ says Nick.
Model maker: Ben Millar. Photography: Franck Chazot/Explorer/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
However, the pair understand the complexities
that come with tackling something like e-waste. ‘It’s a
really rich area, but it is also politically complicated,’
says Steve. ‘It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dive into it,
but it does mean you have to dive into it carefully,
knowing who the players are, and understanding that
you don’t want to go in and actually make the situation
worse for some of the world’s poorest people.’
Steve also has concerns that the e-waste story isn’t
an obvious fit with Vollebak’s brand positioning. It’s a
fair concern. Any sustainability initiative that doesn’t
sit comfortably within a wider brand proposition is
going to come off as cynical greenwashing. He is
working on a storytelling strategy, though. ‘If the world
ends up looking like the one in Wall-E, no one would be
able to have adventures. I was talking to two friends, an
astronaut and an explorer, about the idea of throwing
stuff away. And they were like, “Where is away?” There
is no “away”, it’s just somewhere else that you can’t see.’
The next stage of the project is finding the right
partner to help pull the storytelling strands together,
investigate the practicalities of securing precious metals
from e-waste, and then actually make the watch. No
small order but encouraging conversations are
currently underway. vollebak.com
∂
Design
 Shop now at store.wallpaper.com

‘Rota’ pendant
lamp, Minimalux
—— €492 ——

‘Gila Monster’
vase, L’Objet
—— €385 ——

‘Potte Present’ vase,

Michael Verheyden
—— €247 ——
‘Tadao’ console table,
Forma & Cemento
—— €384 ——
‘Bavaresk’ chair,
Dante Goods And Bads
—— €840 ——

‘Cross’ side table,

Case Furniture
—— €510 ——

‘Carved’ vase,
Tom Dixon Swan statuette,
—— €300 ——
Pulpo
—— €140 ——

‘Neptune’s Cup’ vessel,

House of Today
‘Triple Slinkie’ rug, —— €300 ——
CC-Tapis
—— €9,142 —— ‘City’ vase,
Rosenthal
—— €429 ——

‘Foresta’ tabletop
stand, Alias
—— €200 ——
 1
Fashion
1. The work of artist Giorgio de
Chirico was pivotal in providing
inspiration for the Re-Made
uniforms. His 1973 fountain in
the Triennale museum garden in
Milan’s Parco Sempione features
sculptures of bathers, a beach
ball and a bathing hut, and its
foundation is painted yellow
with brown chevron stripes
2. A pair of glass dishes,
designed in the 1940s by
Carlo Scarpa for Venini,
offered inspiration for the
uniforms’ buttons
3. Design sketches for
the brooches and pins
4. Fabric swatches
5. Final sketch designs for
‘I’m interested in using
the women’s uniforms made
using an organic hard-wearing scraps, mixing together
ticking stripe fabric overlaid
with a chevron pattern lots of linear patterns’

3 4

Uniforms
Roz Barr and Ssone’s de Chirico-inspired workwear for Re-Made’s Milan showcase
Architect Roz Barr has been thinking a lot in the gardens of the Triennale museum. with a chevron pattern, as a nod to de
Archivio Fotografico, Chanticleer Studio/Cupio Gallery, Roz Barr

about fashion recently. Last year, her firm It features colourful sculptures of two Chirico’s original fountain design. ‘I’m
redesigned Selfridges’ creative studios (see bathers, a beach ball, a bathing hut and interested in using scraps, mixing together
W*246), and it is currently updating the a fish, and its foundation is painted yellow lots of linear patterns,’ she says. ‘We’re
Photography/sketches: courtesy ©Triennale Milano –

V&A’s Fashion Gallery. So she was a perfect
fit to design the uniforms for those on
duty at our Re-Made showcase in Milan
next year, working in collaboration with
sustainable fashion label Ssōne, whose
creations also have a uniform-like feel.
For inspiration, Barr looked first to the
architecture of Milan’s Bagni Misteriosi, a
public pool and cultural destination, named
after a work by artist Giorgio de Chirico.
And then to a 1973 fountain, also called
Bagni Misteriosi, that de Chirico designed
for Parco Sempione, currently installed
with brown chevron stripes.
Barr made a deep dive into de Chirico’s
works, finding affinity with sketches and
paintings of figures wearing tunics, which led
to the idea of an apron design. With Ssōne’s
creative director Caroline Smithson, Barr
researched utilitarian outfits, looking at
Irving Penn’s 1950s portraits of butchers,
painters and cleaners, sporting striped
aprons, boiler suits and dungarees. Smithson,
who prioritises using deadstock fabrics and
vintage materials, suggested using an organic
hard-wearing ticking stripe fabric overlaid
looking at creating the zigzag detail using
hand painting or embroidery.’
The apron will be secured using a
colourful toggle, designed in ceramic or glass,
inspired by the water element of the Bagni
Misteriosi. ‘Working on the V&A Fashion
Gallery commission got me thinking about
buttons and brooches,’ says Barr. ‘I liked the
idea of something not quite kitsch, but
definitely decorative. The Bagni Misteriosi
fountain has a swan sculpture at its centre.
The apron’s button would act as a similar
kind of symbol.’ rozbarr.com; ssone.com
∂

WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS ∑ 061

 TONKIN LIU’S IDEAS FOR USING RED MUD TILES OF VARIOUS GEOMETRIES AND ON
VARIOUS SCALES TO REGENERATE WATERSIDE AREAS AND FOR GARDEN FEATURES
Coast
Red mud tiles
A problematic waste product of aluminium turns planet-friendlier
resource in the hands of designers ThusThat and architects Tonkin Liu
WRITER: ELLIE STATHAKI
Imagine a world where manufacturing is so
efficient that waste products become coveted
material resources. UK-based design group
ThusThat is exploring just this reality with its
research into ‘red mud’ – a by-product of the
aluminium production process.
The studio’s Kevin Rouff and Luis Paco
Böckelmann have been studying this curious
and previously fairly neglected by-product
of industry. ‘To make aluminium, alumina
needs to be extracted from bauxite ore. The
residue of this refining process is red mud,
also known as bauxite residue,’ says Rouff.
‘Decades of research are now coalescing,
perhaps due to the rise of material
consciousness. The gargantuan amount
of red mud in landfill is beginning to be
seen as an abundant material resource.’
Red mud has been around since the
late 19th century, when Carl Josef Bayer
discovered the alumina-extraction process,
and Bayer himself suggested ways of using
this waste. But 130 years later, ‘only about
three per cent of it is being put to use, and
mostly as road filler’, says Böckelmann.
There has been little economic incentive
to find an afterlife for red mud; particularly
as it is classified as a hazardous material.
062 ∑
River Garden
Accidents involving the material have given
it a bad name, although advances have been
made in its safe handling and treatment.
Rouff and Böckelmann suggest reducing the
risk around it is crucial and possible.
Enter Tonkin Liu, the dynamic London
architecture studio with a reputation for
bringing together solid, rigorous research,
a beautiful, ethereal aesthetic and clean,
modern, yet often organically inspired
shapes. Principals Anna Liu and Mike Tonkin
have spent years developing approaches
and techniques for efficient and effective
architectural designs.
Their ‘Shell Lace Structure’ method,
a sort of reverse engineering of the
biomechanics of mollusc shells, has been
over ten years in development. Working with
structural engineers from Arup, and using
digital modelling, the pair worked out how
to twist, fold, curve and perforate thin steel
sheets to create light but incredibly strong
and organic-looking spans, beams and pillars.
When they heard of red mud’s potential, they
jumped at the opportunity to experiment.
‘Given the limited resources in our world,
all waste materials should be regarded as
valuable materials, simply in the wrong shape
1. CONVEX CHIMNEY
For wildflowers,
shingle planting,
and wildlife habitat
2. CONVEX WELL
A cooling water
feature or bird bath
3. CONCAVE CHIMNEY
For shingle planting,
embankment planting,
and wildflowers
4. CONCAVE WELL
A seat, reflective pool,
or rock pool
and state, waiting for our imagination to
transform them,’ says Liu. ‘This seems to sum
up the spirit of Wallpaper* Re-Made.’
The pair did their research. ‘There are
two distinct characteristics [of red mud],’
continues Liu, ‘its vast quantity, and its
journey in the global landscape, where it is
mined, processed, stored, and was in the past
discharged into rivers, estuaries or the sea.
We decided to home in on its intriguing
relationship with water.’ The sea, it turns out,
can offer a safe route for handling and using
red mud, as the water neutralises its alkalinity –
it just needs to be done in the right way so as
not to disturb aquatic life.
Tonkin Liu used its understanding of
geometry and structure to come up with
a new application for the material. The result?
A tile-like product with numerous uses: for
the creation of garden water features; as a
roofing material; and to build an environment
for plants and wildlife as part of coastal
bioremediation. The design is scalable
and modular. Each tile is profiled and they
can be joined together to hold water
and habitat or let planting push through.
The architects got together with
ThusThat for a series of brainstorming

Above, a Google Earth image reveals vast red mud pits
alongside an aluminium plant in Australia, containing
some of the 150 million tonnes of the waste material that
is thought to be generated each year. Below, a series of
red mud ceramic and glaze tests by ThusThat
sessions, following their usual design
methodology of exploration and
experimentation. ThusThat’s expert
knowledge of the material has been crucial
in identifying challenges ahead. ‘We need
to understand the economy of scale,’ says
Tonkin. ‘At the moment, we are aspiring to
collaborate with ThusThat to develop not
just another commodity for consumers, but
something that tells red mud’s compelling
story in the landscape.’
Red mud can be sourced from various
places, from factories to research facilities.
Aerial photography: Google Earth
ThusThat has been working on two main
paths of treating the material. First the team
soak, wash and sieve it to remove unwanted
matter. They then run tests to understand
the product’s ability to sinter as a ceramic,
the highest temperature it will withstand,
and its workability. From there, it can be
treated like ceramic – processed like a
traditional clay, formed or cast, and finally
fired in kilns. But it can also work a bit like
cast concrete, or geopolymers, where the
technique is reversed by first firing the
material, then working it mechanically,
Architecture
activating it, and casting it. For the Re-Made
project, the collaborators are exploring both
routes and are now seeking manufacturing
partners to help bring the results to life.
‘We’d ideally like to develop something
that could make use of large quantities of red
mud, alleviating the environmental burden
of storing it in vast vats in the landscape,’ says
Liu. ‘Having worked on research projects in
coastal towns in the UK, we are aware of
issues of rising sea levels, and seaside towns in
need of greening and regeneration.’ Coastal
revitalisation is dear to the architects’ hearts,
but there are other exciting possibilities.
‘Ultimately, red mud will likely be used
in large-scale applications of the construction
and architectural sector,’ says Böckelmann.
‘But a material’s narrative takes a long time
to develop; cement has been in use since
Ancient Rome, but it took nearly two
millennia before it was modified to the
ubiquitous form we know today.’ To develop
red mud, he says, ‘we need to create the
pull, and designers and architects are key to
this. Projects such as this collaboration are
important to demonstrate the possibilities
in form, function and aesthetics.’ ∂
thusthat.com; tonkinliu.co.uk
Your passport to global style
More than 60 compelling cities refined into essential travel-sized
guidebooks and apps at www.phaidon.com/wcg

Portion plate
by Jean-Baptiste Fastrez and Chipsboard
Fostering a healthy approach to portion sizes
and nutritional intake, Jean-Baptiste Fastrez’s
plate was created in collaboration with
London-based brand Chipsboard, which has
developed a non-petroleum-based bioplastic
from the by-product of McCain’s chip
production. By adding further by-products,
such as walnut shell flour or reclaimed coffee
grounds, specifications and appearance can
be altered. Using Chipsboard’s amber-
coloured curcumin composite, Fastrez’s plate
features playful geometric engravings and
partitions on the base to suggest appropriate
portions for each food group, and these
partitions are further defined by a series of
ridges, a play on McCain’s crinkle cut chips.
‘It seemed important not to simply offer an
eco-friendly object to consume more, but a
new object that helps us consume less and
better,’ says Fastrez. For such an everyday
object, this plate has the potential to make
a long-lasting impact on our environment,
chipping away at our need to be kinder,
healthier and smarter with our planet. ∂
jeanbaptistefastrez.com; chipsboard.com
Compost
bin
by High Society and
Black Cow
Photography/renders: Studio Fastrez, Chipsboard, Black Cow, High Society
WRITER: SOPHIA ACQUISTAPACE
Design
Chipsboard’s bioplastic,
made from potato
waste, can be altered in
appearance with the
addition of by-products
such as walnut shell, pine
and curcumin (above),
which was used to colour
Jean-Baptiste Fastrez’s
portion plate (left)
Reversing the stereotype of food waste
disposal as something smelly and dirty that
has to be hidden, High Society has chosen to
stimulant manufacture as a principle resource
(including waste material from hemp, tobacco
and wine), so it chose to source its activated
place the compost bin centre stage. With its charcoal from British vodka producer Black
irregular bulbous form, the Italian studio’s Cow. After 300 years of cheesemaking, Black
design wittingly imitates the ubiquitous Cow turned to whey (a by-product from its
black bin bag, but this bin will honour its dairy farm) to produce vodka. By filtering
decomposing contents as it is made from a the vodka through coconut-shell charcoal,
translucent material that allows for shapes it found a use for yet-another waste material.
and forms to be discerned within. The colour
will be achieved by adding activated charcoal
However, this will be the first time that Black
Cow’s used charcoal is repurposed, proving
to translucent cellulose acetate. High Society again that waste should never be a wasted
has a history of using by-products of opportunity. high-society.it; blackcow.co.uk
∂
High Society’s shapely
compost bin (left) will
be 3D-printed from
translucent cellulose
acetate coloured with
activated charcoal waste
(far left) from vodka
producer Black Cow
∑ 065
Wellness
The final form of the hand
sanitiser, designed by Dutch
studio Odd Matter, is yet
to be decided, but it will
largely be constructed using
material made by Dust London,
who recycle teabag waste
to create their homeware
range, and then covered
in Kinfill’s biodegradable
cleaning extracts

If 2020 has forced us to re-think cleanliness, 2021 will

see us develop new technologies for achieving it.
Pre-empting the needs of our hygiene-conscious future,
biodegradable cleaning company Kinfill has teamed up
with design studios Dust London and Odd Matter to
create a new sanitation tool for Wallpaper* Re-Made.
The idea was born when Els Woldhek and Georgi
Manassiev, the duo behind Odd Matter, noticed
unsightly hand-sanitising stations peppering their
native Rotterdam. These objects were clearly becoming
totems of a new global fixation, but their clunky,
largely plastic forms were not easy on the eye.
Hoping to create a more aesthetically pleasing
alternative, Odd Matter, Dust London and Kinfill set
about designing a new tool for instant sanitation. The
sculptural object’s delicately textured surface will be
covered in a nano-coating of Kinfill’s biodegradable
cleaning extracts, though its final form is yet to be
decided as the teams experiment with the possibilities
of a rollerball-type structure or a block. Either way, it
will be largely constructed using Dust’s unique
material, which is made from tea waste. Visitors are
invited to run their hands along the sculpture’s surface
to quickly and effectively clean them.
The gesture of touching this object is practical,
but it is also symbolic. It transforms the commonplace
hand-sanitising station, an object suffused with anxiety
and fear, into a pleasurably tactile experience that
welcomes physical interaction. ∂
kinfill.com; dustlondon.co; oddmatterstudio.com
 Odd Matter, Dust London
and Kinfill’s tactile totemic
tool gives instant sanitation
and gratification
WRITER: MARY CLEARY

Hand
sanitiser

∑ 067
 Design
Solar harness
Stefan Diez’s exploration of contemporary
ways to utilise the sun’s energy in an urban
context is packed with suspense
WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI
Taking inspiration from an image of clothes
drying between buildings on an Italian
street, opposite above, designer Stefan Diez
drew sketches, above left, for a hose-like
structure containing water, that could be
suspended outdoors and be warmed by
the sun. Diez and his team went on to test
prototypes in the courtyard of his Munich
studio, above right and opposite below
German designer Stefan Diez’s response
to Re-Made’s themes was to look to the sky
to explore a series of ‘proud solutions for
contemporary use of the sun in an urban
context’. The industrial designer is better
known for his no-nonsense, sleek furniture
for the likes of Thonet, Hay and E15, and
for clever thinking when it comes to details
and functionality. One of his most successful
pieces is the ‘D1’ chair, designed for German
manufacturer Wagner. Since its launch in
2017, it has become a staple in offices
worldwide. With its tubular steel frame
perched on an aluminium joint, and a tilting
and pivoting backrest, the chair responds
to its user’s movements and offers a new
level of comfort.
Diez has ventured in a new direction for
Re-Made, led by his solar inspiration. The
amount of solar energy that hits the Earth
is 5,000 times the energy we consume daily:
with this information in mind, Diez
researched low-tech ways that this energy
is commonly used worldwide, from solar
cooking in the desert to sun-drying tomatoes.
In particular, an image of clothes drying
between buildings on a street in southern
Italy resonated with the designer. ‘I liked
that it best illustrates how people have
naturally made use of the sun,’ he says.
It inspired him to consider an intervention
in architectural structures, to utilise the sun’s
energy in a functional, practical manner.
‘I wanted to use a pneumatic principle to
 create sun-collecting structures that expand
when the sun is shining on them, or in case
shade is needed. Under cloudy conditions,
these structures would collapse to a fraction
of their expanded size.’
At his Munich studio, he and his team
started testing, prototyping directly from
his courtyard. His first tests feature a black
hose hanging on a rope suspended across the
outdoor space, collecting the heat of the sun
to warm up the water inside. The initial
design is a simple, intuitive solution, which
will expand after further experimenting
and testing. The project’s next steps will
include collaborating with a specialist
manufacturer to bring the idea to life.
‘I’d like to explore the potential behind the
idea while moving towards insect wing-like
structures made from 3D-knitted fabric and
latex rubber tubes, which are woven into
the structure,’ says Diez. For this concept,
he was particularly interested in the ways
architectural façades are used as functional
‘I wanted to use a pneumatic principle to create sun-collecting
structures that expand when the sun is shining on them’
Photography/sketches: Diez Office
surfaces to regulate light and temperature,
and his project is intended to similarly fit
within an urban context and exist between
buildings. He is intrigued by the idea of
disrupting architectural structures. ‘When
we go through modern architecture, we often
have the feeling that it’s so antiseptic: how
do people fit in this picture?’ he asks.
He continues, ‘Looking at the purpose
of a designer in society, it’s about much more
than creating nice objects. That’s how I saw
the invitation to Re-Made; it offered an
opportunity to come up with something less
expected and more ambitious.’
The project developed from a simple idea,
and the simplicity of its roots is almost
nostalgic in its reference to traditional uses of
light and heat. It originates from a practical
language that is sometimes forgotten:
concludes Diez, ‘to make life convenient has
led to almost a vanishing of semantics that
we all used to understand very well’. ∂
diezoffice.com
∑ 069
 F
or Wallpaper* Re-Made, British artist
and designer Faye Toogood has been
working on a sculptural lamp that
offers a calming form of light and colour
therapy in the home. Tagged ‘Kaleidoscope’,
the lamp has a timeless aesthetic, in keeping
with Toogood’s long-standing goal of
creating pieces that are used and valued
for many years.
Toogood has centred her practice on
materials, so we connected her with London-
based material innovator The Shellworks,
which has extracted a biopolymer called
chitosan from shellfish waste, in order to
create a bioplastic. As the second most
abundant biopolymer in the world, chitosan
reflects the company’s aim ‘to tackle the
plastic problem at scale’, says CEO and
co-founder Insiya Jafferjee.
Shellfish waste is not often upcycled, but
it has enormous potential. ‘We can create
both amorphous (flexible) and crystalline
(rigid) forms, which is quite rare for
bioplastics, which typically tend towards
one form,’ Jafferjee says.
It was The Shellworks’ transparent and
heat-resistant sheet material that caught
Toogood’s eye. ‘With its slight rigidity, it’s not
unlike some of the fabrics and canvases we
have used in the Toogood fashion collection,’
she says. ‘Our signature “Oilrigger” coat has
sculptural details created with folds and seam
lines that inspired [the lamp’s] direction.’
The design of the lamp also draws on the
natural inconsistency in the bioplastic’s
tonal colours, caused by trace minerals left
behind from the extraction process. ‘It
reminds us of 1960s fibreglass in beautiful
golden nicotine colours,’ says Toogood,
‘but now eco-friendly.’ By layering sheets
and shaping them into different conical and
cylindrical forms, she hopes to create a
kaleidoscopic effect. ‘We’re excited to play
with the material to create soft volumes with
ever-changing light patterns and shadows.’
Toogood has previously created lamp
shades in rigid materials such as fibreglass,
but she has also worked with materials
that need support, like Japanese paper – so
The Shellworks’ material, both flexible and
self-supporting, presented itself as an
intriguing new middle ground to explore.
Some of the shapes and forms achieved
so far fittingly imitate the way light is
refracted underwater. Like an ever-changing
kaleidoscope, The Shellworks’ material also
morphs over time, due to frequent exposure
to light, or reactions occurring between the
sheets and the environments they inhabit.
Says Jafferjee, ‘We hope to harness some of
these changes and celebrate them; it’s quite a
magical part of the material’s behaviour.’ ∂
fayetoogood.com; t-o-o-g-o-o-d.com;
theshellworks.com

Photographed at Toogood’s studio, sketches of

the lamp and experiments with The Shellworks’
bioplastic sheeting, which will form the shade

070 ∑
 Design

Calming lamp
The natural tones of a bioplastic derived from shellfish waste
inspire a kaleidoscopic lamp by Faye Toogood and The Shellworks
WRITER: SOPHIA ACQUISTAPACE
 Shelving system
Biocement, courtesy of Sharjah sand and material
innovator BioMason, is a building block for
designer Asif Khan’s locally inspired display case
WRITER: ELLIE STATHAKI
Can a fairly new material be used in the same way
as the conventional ones we have been building with
for centuries? Would it be a viable option to replace,
say, concrete, with an environmentally responsible
alternative and still get the same results in terms of
architectural performance? And how can a structure
be intrinsically linked to its locale? It is questions
like these that London-based designer Asif Khan
set off to explore with his Wallpaper* Re-Made project,
‘Coral Reef ’, created in partnership with American
cement industry innovator BioMason.
The North Carolina-based company, co-founded by
CEO Ginger Krieg Dosier and her partner Michael
Dosier, is revolutionary in its field. It ‘grows’ sustainable
cement by employing microorganisms, just as coral
reefs are formed in marine environments. ‘Aggregate
is mixed with our microorganisms, pressed into
shape and fed an aqueous solution until hardened
to specification,’ explains Krieg Dosier. ‘BioMason’s
process enables materials to be formed in ambient
temperatures by replacing the curing process with the
formation of biologically controlled structural cement.’
The company is also researching marine biocement
with the ability to self-repair.
The idea for ‘Coral Reef ’ was born of one of Khan’s
ongoing projects in the UAE – the new Museum of
Manuscripts in Sharjah. The structure is currently
under construction (with a view to completion in 2021),
and its surface is made out of many small stone
elements, referencing traditional local coral-stone
buildings and the geometry of Arish, the region’s palm-
leaf architecture. ‘When we started working with
BioMason, I wondered if we could recreate an element
of our building from its biocement, and I wanted that
product to use Sharjah’s sand as its aggregate material –
a resource that is plentiful,’ says Khan. ‘It’s an
experiment, but the idea of making a structure
from what we find on site is very simple and poetic.
072 ∑
We decided to create a prototype section of external
wall as our Re-Made project to test this possibility.’
Creating the structure with Sharjah sand is not as
straightforward as it may seem, even with BioMason’s
strong, existing ties with this part of the world. ‘We
first used the sands and indigenous aggregates in
Sharjah in 2009 when we created the technology,’ says
Krieg Dosier. ‘We will seek to bring this technology
full circle by using Sharjah aggregates to produce our
BioLith tile product [the company’s main product for
commercial and residential applications] as a building
façade material.’ The collaborators agree that a lot of
research and strength testing will be needed to ensure
the end product’s workability.
For Re-Made, the team is hoping to reimagine an
element from the museum’s structure as a shelving unit
built from ingots of biocement. It’s a response that
felt appropriate, says Khan. ‘Fish use coral reefs as
places to graze and explore; I think a shelving system
can have a similar feeling for people.’ The piece may
even become part of the museum, when it opens. But
the point of this project goes beyond its practical
applications. There’s a deep, conceptual and symbolic
value to the experiment.
‘BioMason was founded by two architects who
worked in the UAE from 2007 to 2014,’ explains
Krieg Dosier. ‘The Re-Made project continues that
narrative, expressing regionalism and reverence
to other building materials used in the UAE. This
project, design and collaboration are a proud and
compassionate statement to working with materials
found on site and our responsibility to place and
environment.’ Khan also feels ‘Coral Reef ’ is an
exciting challenge: ‘I like that this project gave me the
opportunity of remaking something that was precious
to us [the museum’s original design]. Perhaps we should
all challenge our design assumptions more often.’ ∂
asif-khan.com; biomason.com
 Architecture

1. A render of Asif Khan’s

Museum of Manuscipts,
currently under construction
in Sharjah. It features a
latticed stone façade –
inspired by local Arish
(palm-leaf) architecture and
coral stone walls – which
provided the starting point
for his Re-Made collaboration
with BioMason
2. A model for the museum’s
lattice structure
3. Khan’s sketch references
the use of Sharjah sand, which
BioMason will combine with
microorganisms to produce
environmentally responsible 4
tiles. In turn, these will be used
to build a screen-like shelving
unit for Wallpaper* Re-Made
4. Khan’s vision for the
shelving unit, taking its
cues from the museum’s
façade. It incorporates
open areas for plants and
objects, and built-in seating
Images: © Asif Khan
 Knife sharpener
Designers Jenkins & Uhnger and Victorinox propose a mobile repair service
WRITER: SOPHIA ACQUISTAPACE
Below, from Jenkins & Uhnger’s
moodboard, visual research
into arrotini, travelling Italian
knife sharpeners
Opposite, their plans for a
mobile sharpening station, in
collaboration with Victorinox,
combine a custom bike frame
with a grinding wheel, and nod
to the versatility of the blade
specialist’s Swiss Army knife
074 ∑
How often do we just discard and buy new,
rather than turning to repair? We kicked off
this dialogue with Norway-based designers
Jenkins & Uhnger, who noted that repair
shops are often tired and rundown, when
they ought to be one of the most vibrant,
important places on the high street and a
service people take pride in using.
Sverre Uhnger, who trained as a
cabinetmaker, and Thomas Jenkins, as an
engineering product designer, came together
in 2015 based on shared principles. ‘We are
passionate about building things to last, but
with the understanding that you also need to
care for a product during its life,’ says Jenkins.
While Wallpaper* Re-Made takes
a glimpse into our future lives, it was
imperative to look back to the past for
inspiration. Jenkins & Uhnger researched
repair services through history, and one
example that resonated was the arrotino, the
travelling knife sharpener. Such workers
roamed the Italian provinces for hundreds of
years, ringing their bells to get the attention
of citizens who might need knives or scissors
sharpened. They serve as a reminder that
repair was once seen as an artisanal craft, not
just a functional service.
Starting off on foot, the arrotino became
ever more mobile with the advent of bicycles
and then motor vehicles. But the tradition
died out in the late 20th century. With this in
mind, we set Jenkins & Uhnger the task of
creating something that similarly incentivises
people to bring new life to old objects, and
transforms today’s notions of repair into
something more desirable and rewarding.
To work on this modern interpretation of
the arrotino, we also called on Swiss knife
expert Victorinox, which has been perfecting
the art of blade-sharpening for 136 years.
Currently the largest knife manufacturer in
Europe, Victorinox produces more than 20
million household and professional knives
each year from its headquarters in Ibach, in
the Swiss canton of Schwyz. Each knife
comes with a lifetime guarantee. ‘We offer a
repair service for all our products rather than
supporting a throwaway culture. As a family-
owned company, we strive for sustainability
in everything we do. Not for nothing do we
consider our products for life,’ says Veronika
Elsener, the fourth-generation co-owner and
chief marketing officer of the company.
Overseeing the technical elements of
our arrotino project is Erwin Müller, chief
production officer and member of the
executive board, who started at Victorinox as
an apprentice more than 45 years ago. ‘All
Victorinox kitchen knives are given the
perfect cut by hand. It’s an interplay of the
fineness of the grinding wheel, the right
temperature that is generated with the
cooling, and the expertise of the knife
grinder, who places the blade at the right
angle on the grindstone,’ he explains.
Having explored both static and mobile
options, Jenkins & Uhnger decided on the
latter, reasoning that direct-to-customer
potential is important. ‘In our factory we
have rather big, heavy grinding wheels and
Images: Jenkins & Uhnger
sharpeners. So I am curious to see how the
designers will pull together a compact and
transportable design,’ says Müller.
The proposed design features a grinding
wheel set on a custom bike frame that, when
not in motion, is propped up on a stand so
that the pedals rotate the wheel. ‘It’s one

‘It’s exciting to work with such a specific function
in mind. It really appeals to our inner nerds!’
thing to solve the technical challenge,
another to make this look desirable, too,’ says
Jenkins. The project is now entering the
development phase, with technical details
being discussed, such as the diameter of the
grinding wheel and the optimal rotation
speed. One challenge is the positioning of the
handlebars and the grinding wheel so they
do not get in the way of each other.
‘It’s exciting to work with such a specific
function in mind. It really appeals to our
inner nerds!’ says Jenkins. Inspired by the
versatility of Victorinox’s original Swiss Army
knife, the designers are exploring additional
features, including a dynamo, which pedal-
powers an LED light, as well as a built-in
tachometer that measures the rotation speed
of the grinding wheel. The next step would
be to bring a bicycle partner on board to
make the custom frame.
Design
‘It’s been interesting to figure out how to
relaunch a service that is in decline, by
working out how it needs to be adapted to
modern lifestyles,’ says Uhnger. ‘We’d like to
see the sharpener used numerous ways,
catering to the public at markets, as well as
servicing restaurant kitchens. We also think
it can be an educational tool, increasing
awareness around making objects that last.’
Of equal importance is the reintroduction
of the human element to services that are
now often automated and anonymised.
‘We are not making a product, but a
service,’ says Jenkins. ‘We hope that this will
remind people that any old knife can be
sharpened, be it one you got for Christmas
last year, or your grandfather’s classic
penknife. As we see it, more services like
this can evolve in the years to come.’∂
jenkinsuhnger.com; victorinox.com
 Textiles and dyes
SaltyCo’s freshwater-free fabrics and Kaiku’s alternative plant-based
pigments combine in a colourful show of sustainability
As one of the heaviest strains on the Earth’s natural
resources, the textile manufacturing industry is ripe for
a revolution. Leading the charge are two companies
that have sprung from prestigious London universities.
Kaiku, a material innovation studio established by
Imperial College graduate Nicole Stjernswärd, provides
a viable alternative to synthetic dyes through the
extraction of pigments from agricultural food waste.
SaltyCo is a start-up formed by Finlay Duncan,
Julian Ellis-Brown, Antonia Jara-Contreras and
Neloufar Taheri – postgraduate students in innovation
design engineering from Imperial and the Royal
College of Art – that is the first company to produce
textiles without using freshwater.
Cotton growing and processing is a thirsty business;
producing a single cotton sock sucks up the equivalent
of three years’ drinking water for a single person,
claims SaltyCo. ‘We are passionate about tackling water
scarcity,’ says Taheri. ‘In order to remove freshwater
from textile production, we turned to seawater, which
represents 97 per cent of the water on the planet.
Working alongside nature, we grow salt-tolerant plants
to produce natural saltwater textiles.’
Similarly, Kaiku’s disruption of the synthetic dye
and pigment sector came from questioning why these
chemicals remain ubiquitous, despite having adverse
environmental and social effects.
‘In fashion, there are huge concerns about chemical
use, but alternatives are limited in scope,’ says
Stjernswärd, who researched how the Old Masters
created pigments and observed how paint was used in
contemporary art and design studios, before coming
across a textile designer who used food scraps as dye.
‘I realised that although the textile and paint industries
have been working independently in recent history,
they both use plants to generate vibrant colorants.’
Kaiku uses waste components of agricultural
products: shells, skins and seeds from mid- to large-
scale food producers and farmers, to extract the colours
it needs. ‘The process involves different types of
machines and boiling plant waste to extract its colour
compounds,’ Stjernswärd says. ‘We then convert
these compounds into shelf-stable powders that can
be used for paints, dyes and potentially cosmetics.
The remaining biomass can be used for biofuels.
‘Because we don’t rely on traditional dye plants,
it’s a new frontier in discovering what works. I recently
extracted a bright pink colour from aloe vera, which
few could have predicted,’ she says. ‘Almost all plants
076 ∑ WRITER: PEI-RU KEH PHOTOGRAPHY: NICOLE STJERNSWÄRD/KAIKU
Some of the natural materials,
pigments and dye swatches
from Kaiku’s experiments
1. Red cabbage-dyed
SaltyCo fibres beside
a dish of egg shell
2. Red cabbage dye, used to
colour the adjacent silk square
3. Birch pigment and, in the
dish below, birch bark
4. Onion-dyed silk
5. A dish of avocado pigment
between two squares of
avocado-dyed silk
6. Non-woven, undyed SaltyCo
fabric, bottom, and fibres, in
the dish above
7. Pine pigment and
pine needles
can be used to dye things, but whether that turns out
as an attractive, vibrant and lightfast dye is variable.
There is a reason we cultivated plants such as indigo
and woad over the centuries – they contain a large
amount of the compounds needed for colour. Yet those
compounds do exist in other everyday plants, albeit in
smaller quantities. This is how we can get similar pinks
from avocado as you would normally get from madder
root, another traditional dye plant. They are different
species, but the building blocks are present in both.’
SaltyCo is equally committed to re-examining
overlooked resources. Its three-step process starts with
saline agriculture, a nascent farming method that
irrigates salt-tolerant plants with seawater. Not only
does the robust nature of these plants eliminate the
need for pesticides, the areas where they grow can also
sequester CO2 up to 50 times more efficiently than a
similar area in the rainforest. The fibres of these plants
are harvested and extracted using proprietary methods
specifically optimised for these varieties. They are then
made into textiles using methods that meet industry
standards to ensure seamless integration.
While each start-up is re-thinking deeply rooted
textile manufacturing processes in its respective field,
SaltyCo and Kaiku are now jointly exploring how to
put this into practical use for Wallpaper* Re-Made.
They have been experimenting with applying Kaiku’s
dyes to SaltyCo’s non-woven fibres, a 100 per cent
plant-based, biodegradable material akin to wool felt.
‘The collaboration represents how we can reinvent
the way we interact with nature,’ says Ellis-Brown.
‘Both companies look to utilise the disregarded and
devalued natural world to build symbiotic connections
with our environment. SaltyCo uses abundant
seawater, undervalued land and hardy shrubs just as
Kaiku looks to food waste-streams, invasive plant
species and wild flowers. This enables us to align our
visions of a more sustainable, more natural world.’
Stjernswärd adds, ‘We share the goal of challenging
the current norm of extractive exploitation of nature.
We both want to promote regenerative agriculture
in our supply chain, and challenge traditional
monoculture crops by using novel species. Now that
we’ve proved we can use our materials together, we’re
excited to apply this to the real world, such as with
a furniture piece or fashion garment. I already see this
material shift happening in the design community; we
now need industry investment to achieve it at scale.’ ∂
saltyco.uk; kaiku.bio
 Design

6 5
Subscribers SinceÉ 1996

STEFANO BOERI
ARCHITECT, TRIENNALE PRESIDENT AND SHAPER OF URBAN FUTURES
Wallpaper* subscriber since 1996

Wallpaper* is ready for reference at the architect’s apartment in Milan,

with Front’s magazine rack for Kartell, and Boeri’s own ‘Mettitutto’ storage unit
for Annibale Colombo (right), photographed by Allegra Martin
Share a picture of your Wallpaper* collection using #subscribersince and tagging @wallpapermag
Subscribe today at wallpaper.com/sub20 and receive subscriber-only, limited-edition,
artist-designed covers, and delivery to your door. Twelve issues for £100. Offer closes 31 October 2020.
For full terms and conditions, visit magazinesdirect.com/terms.

∑ 079
 YOU WON'T FEEL AT HOME WITH US,
YOU'LL FEEL AT A FASANO.

Hotel Fasano Angra dos Reis

SÃO PAULO . RIO DE JANEIRO . PUNTA DEL ESTE . FAZENDA BOA VISTA

ANGRA DOS REIS . BELO HORIZONTE . SALVADOR . RESIDENCE NEW YORK

@fasano #fasano www.fasano.com.br

Re-
We’ve gathered some of the most astute creative minds,
a broad stretch but experts in their fields. All are
convinced that positive change takes risk, research,
experiment, trial, more than occasional error and
a good measure of righteous indignation

082 Formafantasma
Can we make fuller use of ephemeral things?
088 Afterparti
Who holds the power to shape our cities?
094 Paul Dillinger
Is fashion fixable?
098 Map Project Office
Can you create a perfect circle?
102 Fernando Laposse
What’s the problem with crushed avocado?
106 Christien Meindertsma
Can lino live forever?
110 Nate Petre
Is micro-making the future?

For more to re-think about,

see our Re-Made reading list on page 114

think ∑ 081
 Can we make fuller use
of ephemeral things?
Formafantasma
The Amsterdam-based studio has set a new course
exploring the environmental impact of temporary
installation and exhibition design
Writer Rosa Bertoli
In just over a decade, Andrea Trimarchi
and Simone Farresin, of Amsterdam-based
studio Formafantasma, have developed a
powerful design language based on social,
political and ethical themes, combined with
diverse historical references and topped off
with a sublime multidisciplinary aesthetic.
Every project from the Italian pair has made
us reconsider how we consume, produce,
design and relate to objects and
manufacturing. It’s a career trajectory that
makes them a natural candidate for Re-Made.
This year, the studio’s interest shifted
towards exhibition design and temporary
installations, a new direction that they
first explored with a set creation for the
Rijksmuseum’s exhibition ‘Caravaggio-
Bernini. Baroque in Rome’, and later through
their own solo show, ‘Cambio’, at London’s
Serpentine Galleries. They have also been
commissioned to work on the design of
exhibitions coming up next year at Rome’s
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, exploring the
relationship between science and art, and
at Utrecht’s Centraal Museum, focusing
on the idea of the garden.
So it felt appropriate to enlist the studio
to also create the set in which Wallpaper*
Re-Made will be presented next year in Milan.
Though it’s still rather early to make concrete
plans for the design of the space, we have
082 ∑
spent the past few months in discussion
with Trimarchi and Farresin, conversations
that have allowed us to delve deep into the
pair’s wider design approach.
The duo graduated in 2009 from Design
Academy Eindhoven (where they now also
teach), presenting a project that looked at the
influence of migration on Sicilian ceramics.
They were spotted by London gallerist Libby
Sellers, who later presented the concept in
her gallery and worked with the designers on
further projects over the years. ‘Andrea and
Simone’s acute sensitivity towards design’s
political and ecological responsibilities
has been central to their work,’ says Sellers.
‘Like many great critical design thinkers,
their investigative gaze has more recently
turned inwards on the design industry itself
in the hope that their forensic findings will
be systemically applied to all areas of the
practice – from research and development
through to production and distribution.
That they have managed to balance such
value-laden advocacy with extreme elegance,
and occasional wit, is truly admirable.’
Since their debut, they have worked
on gallery pieces, objects and installations,
collaborating with the likes of Fendi, Flos,
Dzek (see W*242) and Alcantara, among
many others. There is a fine balance
between commercial commissions and
their self-initiated, ethics-driven projects,
and the designers are increasingly trying to
close the gap between the two.
They first considered the environmental
impact of temporary installations during
a collaboration with Italian fashion brand
Sportmax. The studio designed the backdrops
for the brand’s S/S16 and A/W16 shows,
creating sets inspired by deconstructed
architecture and Giotto’s medieval paintings,
and using materials such as terracotta pipes,
coloured PVC film and foam towers. ‘When
you work on an installation that lasts
20 minutes, you need to think of alternative
solutions,’ says Farresin. He adds that
their approach was to use as little material
as possible, but also to devise alternative
solutions so as to create less waste.
For each temporary installation, the
duo develops a long-term view of the
project’s timeframe, asking themselves where
All collages: courtesy of Formafantasma
the materials come from, how the design can
involve the local community, and what will
happen to the material once the project is
dismantled. Location has also been a focus
for the designers, who approach it both
from a historical and a practical point of
view – for example, looking at what can be
recycled from within the archives. ‘The use
of space to exhibit has always been a crucial
element of our work,’ says Trimarchi. »
 Re-Think

Formafantasma’s set creation for the

Rijksmuseum’s 2020 exhibition
‘Caravaggio-Bernini. Baroque in Rome’
drew on a contemporary, modular visual
language, using Kvadrat fabric, plinths
and display supports, leaving ample
space for the Baroque artworks to shine,
as well as allowing for the possibility
of repurposing set parts
 In 2012, Fendi invited Formafantasma to
develop Craftica, a new body of work exploring
leathercraft. The studio combined Fendi
leather with fish and animal leathers from
food industry waste, as well as vegetable
leathers from tree bark and cork. The designs
of each final piece bore a distinct trace of
the animal, fish or tree it once was
084 ∑
The work of architect Pier Luigi Nervi got
the Formafantasma treatment at Rome’s
MAXXI Museum in 2019, a collaboration
with synthetic material company Alcantara.
The designers created a series of structures
built from work-site scaffolding, choosing
to present his work in an unfinished state,
thus inviting viewers’ interpretation

Formafantasma’s preparatory collage of the
set design for Sportmax’s A/W catwalk show
for Milan fashion week in 2016, which was
based on architectural elements in medieval
paintings by Italian artist Giotto. The set
was dominated by four foam towers, each
of which was borrowed from a supplier
and returned at the end of the show
Re-Think
A sketch of the set for Sportmax’s S/S16
catwalk show at Milan’s Palazzo delle Poste,
the first collaboration between Formafantasma
and the fashion brand. Taking cues from
deconstructed architecture and the work
of Russian Cubo-Futurist artist Aleksandra
Ekster, the studio interspersed the set with
terracotta pipes and coloured PVC strips
 Re-Think
‘That Formafantasma have managed to
balance such value-laden advocacy with
extreme elegance, and wit, is admirable’
Their work for the Rijksmuseum is a fitting
demonstration of the pair’s evolving
approach. Trimarchi and Farresin created a
contemporary, modular visual language with
fabric from Danish brand Kvadrat, which
they used to define plinths and other display
supports. The modules were created ‘to
emphasise the sculptural qualities of the
works of Bernini and the idiosyncratic lights
on Caravaggio’s paintings’, with a display
created to highlight the two Baroque artists’
visual innovations. ‘Formafantasma chose
an elegant, understated style that left ample
space for the Baroque language of the
artworks to fully manifest itself,’ says Frits
Scholten, the museum’s senior curator of
sculpture. The Kvadrat material was cut
while keeping its height intact, so that it
would be easy to use later in other projects:
Trimarchi and Farresin are exploring possible
options, but they mention this second life
as something they now try to consider from
the start of a temporary installation.
The pair draw from their vast research
into display designs, looking at long-lasting
display solutions by the likes of Carlo Scarpa,
Achille Castiglioni and Franco Albini.
Among their inspirations is a radical 1968
design by architect Lina Bo Bardi for the
São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), featuring
glass easels supported by concrete bases.
‘We are keen on displays that are very
086 ∑
strong from a material point of view, so
that they last,’ says Farresin. ‘Bo Bardi’s set
was so sophisticated that it lasted well beyond
its intended exhibition.’ Although the easels
were discontinued in the mid-1990s, they
were recently reintroduced by MASP’s
artistic director Adriano Pedrosa as display
elements and feel as contemporary as they
had been half a century ago. (The displays
were also an inspiration for British
artist Isaac Julien, who recreated them
for his exploration of Bo Bardi’s work,
A Marvellous Entanglement, see W*243).
Creating display supports that last was
the studio’s focus for ‘Cambio’: Trimarchi
and Farresin designed the backdrop to their
research and thought process as a series of
furniture pieces. Tables, stools, bookshelves
and desks were made from the wood of a
single pine tree sourced from Italy’s Val di
Fiemme, an area badly hit by a storm in
2018 and one of the focal points of their
analysis. It reflects their belief that design
should not be motivated by aesthetics alone.
‘Design plays an important role in relation
to the production, extraction and processing
of materials,’ explains Farresin. ‘So whenever
we can, we try to investigate this complex
tension between the exploitation
of the environment and design.’ The wood’s
texture was enriched using a varnish
normally employed in the manufacturing of
uk £10.00
us $16.99
aus $16.99
cdn $17.99
dkk 129.95
fr €14.0
de €14.90
ita €14.50
jpn ¥2000
sgp $28.50
es €14.00
chf 18.90
aed 85.00
*Architecture � Design � Art � Travel � Entertaining � Beauty & Grooming � Transport � Technology � Fashion � Watches & Jewellery August 2020
This magazine is storing approximately 665.19g of CO2
Limited edition cover
by Formafantasma
Above, Formafantasma’s
limited-edition cover offers
a microscopic view of paper
fibres from eucalyptus,
a fast-growing plant often
using for paper production,
and includes an estimate
of the quantity of CO2 each
magazine contains. Keeping
the magazine for longer
or for reuse will postpone
the release of CO2 into
the atmosphere when it is
eventually incinerated.
Limited-edition covers are
available to subscribers,
see Wallpaper.com
musical instruments, and the pieces will
be available to purchase via Rome gallery
Giustini Stagetti, ready for a second life.
‘The invitation from Serpentine Galleries
to Formafantasma has been an opportunity
for us to follow even more closely their
interdisciplinary approach to design,’ says
Giustini Stagetti director Michela Tornielli
di Crestvolant. ‘What makes the theoretical
aspect of their research so rich is the overlap
and the cross-pollination between different
areas of study that are usually distant from
the design world. Through their exhibition
design, Formafantasma demonstrate that
they can allow contents to model their space,
giving shape to theory both through a
particular point of view and the use of a
method: design follows material.’
The designers are now also experimenting
with more temporary and immaterial
solutions – for example, light, colour, smell,
sound and atmospheric conditions – as
different ways to define the space. Although
each of their projects has resulted in a very
clear formal language, they are still surprised
by the physical forms of their work. ‘The
result is always different than what we
imagine,’ says Trimarchi. ‘And this happens
because we don’t work formally, but through
a process-based approach: processes are the
guiding forces of our work.’ ∂
formafantasma.com
Photography: ©Hans Hemmert/VG Bild-Kunst/DACS, ©Katharina Grosse/VG Bild-Kunst, Jean Prouvé,
courtesy of Galerie Patrick Seguin/Vitra, ©Ettore Sottsass/ADAGP/DACS, ©Tetsuo Kondo Architects

Formafantasma’s influences
and inspirations include,
clockwise from top right,
Hans Hemmert’s sculpture
Emergency; Katharina Grosse’s
installation Mumbling Mud;
Jean Prouvé’s ‘Demountable’
chair; Plastique Fantastique’s
Blurry Venice installation;
Ettore Sottsass’ Metafore
series; and Cloudscapes
by Transsolar and Tetsuo
Kondo Architects
Re-Think

Who holds the power

to shape our cities?
Afterparti
Cities are unequal, and power struggles often play out in the arena of
the built environment, say the London-based collective of young
architecture writers. We asked them to take over the following pages to
reflect on how we can make contemporary urban spaces more inclusive
Writers Afterparti

From Failure to Power
Afterparti is a collective of nine London-
based writers founded in March 2019 to
champion radical, underrepresented voices
within the culture and criticism of
architecture. We explore big ideas about
contemporary urban space through the lenses
of identity and race.
Afterparti curates live events on themes
like failure and power. These events are then
followed by a zine, also called Afterparti,
which acts as a platform to further develop
the conversation and also as a space to
document our thoughts and experiences. The
on-stage discussions at our events become
catalysts for the content of the zine and point
us towards potential contributors whom we
We love that much of our audience is just like
us: diverse, passionate and energetic. But our
zines and events are for everyone. We aspire
for them to be as relevant to architects and
designers as they are to wider society, because
we all have a stake in the built environment.
We have a desire to take the discussion
outside of aesthetics. Architecture is political,
architecture is social, architecture affects
lives. So we deal with these issues in the zine.
Architectural criticism may appear niche but
in reality, it isn’t. Everyone has an opinion on
the spaces and structures around them; it is
the language and the platforms in which
criticism appears that are niche and selective.
That is what we are challenging by widening
the conversation to include others. Taking
relationship of mutual exchange. Just as
architecture influences and is reflected in
media, it is influenced by it in turn. As
writers, producers, architects, educators
and designers, we recognise this. We are
here to challenge the normative discourse
around the built environment. We aim
to unearth buried and neglected stories
within the urban fabric that we believe
have been purposely marginalised and
excluded from the architectural discourse.
In doing so, we hope to give power and
voice to those in an unequal city, like
London, who feel ignored and unheard.
We feel that we have a responsibility as
writers, as there is no doubt about the impact
of discourse on architectural practice.
Photography: Fiona Cuypers-Stanienda

invite to expand upon them in a personal,
playful or even provocative manner.
Our zine is only available in print, as,
since we are all swimming in PDFs, we think
it’s important to switch off from the screen
and have something that you can hold.
Something that takes up physical space on
your shelf. We hope that through our live
events and our zine launch parties, we can
build a closer relationship with our audience.
the conversation outside of closed circles and
exploring issues that resonate with a wider
audience opens up urgent topics and valuable
perspectives that aren’t typically heard.
Whenever we write, we aim to take
control of our narrative, to become agents
of change. The relationship between
architecture and media doesn’t flow in a
single trajectory, it isn’t simply a relationship
of one influencing the other; it is a
Therefore, when we write, we do so with the
intention of not only transforming the way
people interact with or see the city, but also
the practice of designing the city itself. We’re
more interested in cities than buildings, and
in their inhabitants than designers. When
talking about architecture, we always want to
take the discussion beyond beauty. And we
want to invite as many people as possible to
engage in that conversation with us. »
From left to right, Afterparti members Nile Bridgeman,
Thomas Aquilina, Marwa El Mubark, Shukri Sultan,
Tara Okeke, Aoi Phillips, Siufan Adey, Josh Fenton and
Samson Famusan, photographed in front of London’s
Barbican Centre in February

∑ 089
Re-Think

‘A lot of times we talk about wanting to control the

terms by which we’re participating and engaging
in the city. That’s one of the real challenges for
vulnerable movements, to find the language to
articulate the power which we actually do have, as
opposed to just using random acts or just violence’
— Julia King, designer and researcher

Positive Disruption audience who may not be familiar with the

Afterparti was formed out of the first cohort
of New Architecture Writers (NAW), a
programme for black and minority ethnic
emerging writers designed to disrupt the
monoculture of architectural discourse.
Architecture and architectural media can
be perceived as inaccessible fields. The city
and its narrative have long been represented
by a range of voices that do not reflect the
spectrum of its day-to-day users, much less its
inhabitants. This is the context in which
NAW was conceived in 2017: an open call
heralding a younger, socially conscious range
of voices. More importantly, a range of voices
that represents the city today.
Part of NAW’s success has been its
selection of writing as a tool for critiquing
the built environment. While it may not
seem like the most relevant mode of
expression in a visually dominant profession,
it is important to recognise that the vast
majority of architectural criticism exists in
written form through a plethora of
language of plans, sections and elevations.
With this in mind, the open call fulfilled
its ambition. Nine writers were shortlisted.
The programme unfolded over the course of
a year, covering a mix of writing and editing
workshops, building tours, and even an
introduction to publishing. Industry
connections – often the preserve of the
privileged – were recognised as integral, and
consistently made available through regular
mentoring on assignments. This facilitated an
environment where discussions on identity
and spatial inequality could transpire,
culminating in our inaugural event
‘The Time for Failure is Now’, followed by
our inaugural zine, Issue #00.
The live event is key to our belief that
architectural criticism is a conversation, not
a monologue. Our events recognise the need
to provide a platform for underrepresented
voices. We see this as an important part of
tackling monoculture. By definition, culture
is an intersection of co-existing identities
Photography: Afterparti

architecture magazines and journals. The
critic plays an important role in
contextualising what is being proposed for
our city, and writing is a crucial tool for
deconstructing and articulating this. It is also
an accessible tool, able to reach a wider
that together form a narrative. By providing
a platform for these identities, we can begin
to shape relationships and dismantle barriers
to create an inclusive environment. The first
step is opening up dialogue and providing an
alternative perspective.
‘The voice is powerful. But it’s either here and never
remembered outside of this venue, or if it’s recorded
as a podcast, it’s only in the front of people’s minds
for the first couple of seconds of the day, then it
disappears. So physical print is important, because
it allows that to stay at the forefront of people’s
minds at all times’
— André Anderson, designer and educator

Zine Making in a Digital Age had become the overwhelming sentiment

Published last March, Afterparti’s prototype
zine, Issue #00, championed the idea that
makers of urban spaces need to ‘fail better’
In an age when the digital is valued over
the analogue, and the transitory over the
permanent, print becomes even more
pertinent. And within a discourse littered
with safe opinions, self-publishing
becomes almost crucial for the preservation
of one’s own voice. To write and publish
our own content gives us the power to
tackle uncomfortable truths; to open up
conversations about important but
insufficiently discussed topics; and to reach
out to a mix of underrepresented voices,
exciting upstarts and established figures alike.
Our prototype zine, Issue #00, became an
experiment in style, voice and collaboration,
catalysed by our live debate in June 2018,
‘The Time for Failure is Now’. It was
published in March 2019, two years after the
Grenfell tragedy and a year after the
Windrush scandal, which we felt to be a
fitting time to discuss failure. For us, failure
that simmered under the surface of
architectural discourse. From the housing
crisis to the punitive regeneration projects
carried out by the council of the London
borough of Southwark, failure is what came
to define the moment. It was also that said
failure that we as a society feared the most.
We addressed this feeling of failure in a
number of ways. Each contribution in the
zine responded to a quote from the previous
event, building upon them, challenging them
or subverting them. We explored the theme
through essays, interviews and archival
images, as well as more experimental formats,
such as a playlist called ‘Sound Advice’, by
Joseph Henry of the Greater London
Authority and Pooja Agrawal, co-founder of
social enterprise Public Practice. This has
since grown into a platform exploring spatial
inequality through mixing social
commentary and music. »

∑ 091
Re-Think

‘Our identity provides us with that sense of agency

or maybe even urgency in creating a different world.
How do these perspectives connect to people who
might identify in different ways, or connect to people
who might be racialised, or categorised in different
ways? How do we see the ways in which our ideas, our
histories, our experiences, and our struggles are very
much connected to those different identities?’
— Adam Elliott-Cooper, sociologist

For the Love of Power
Identity and personal perspectives are
central to our work and to framing our
conversations about cities. Our platforms
become places we share with others to
speak candidly about the built environment
in a holistic manner, transcending a
discourse more typically dominated by
aesthetics alone. Cities are unequal,
and power struggles more often than not
panel consisting of Julia King, a designer
and researcher at the London School
of Economics, Adam Elliott-Cooper,
board member of anti-racist organisation
The Monitoring Group, and André Anderson,
headmaster of Freedom & Balance, a
creative school ‘for the artist in everyone’.
Over the course of two hours we spoke
about feelings of despondency in the face of
power, the lasting impacts of an education
Above, Afterparti’s event at London’s
Barbican Centre this March featured
panellists (from left) Adam Elliott-Cooper,
Julia King and André Anderson, responding
to the question ‘Who and what holds the
power to shape our buildings and cities?’
Opposite, Afterparti commissioned
Nigerian illustrator Ojima Abalaka to
create this artwork to bring together
three quotes from the event
Photography: Brydn Webb Photography. Artwork: Ojima Abalaka

play out in – and are intrinsically connected
to – the arena of the built environment.
At our most recent event, as part of the
Architecture Foundation’s ‘Architecture
on Stage’ programme, we invited a panel
that didn’t consist of a single architect, in
the hope that this would engender a fuller
discussion around cities. At the beginning
of 2020 – before the lockdown triggered
by Covid-19 and before the worldwide
Black Lives Matter protests – we took to a
sold-out stage at London’s Barbican Centre.
We posed the question: ‘Who and what holds
the power to shape our buildings and cities?’
It became an evening of poems,
recitations, debate, discussion and calls to
action, accompanied by a distinguished
system that paints false narratives, the power
in taking ownership of your narrative, spatial
and environmental injustices, the lack of
choice or visibility for marginalised
communities, the portrayal of the working
classes, police brutality, reclaiming power,
black love, and the active role of citizens and
cities in each of these.
It has taken the murder of George Floyd
to bring these conversations to the fore, but
we’ve always been having them. So were our
parents and grandparents. Now, more than at
any other time, we are fighting to be seen and
to be heard. We are fighting for an equal stake
in our cities and societies. We are not
powerless; we each have a part to play in
the city. ∂ afterparti.co.uk, @afterpartizine
 My call to action might be: begin to
decolonise our curriculums, think
about the language that we use,
and don’t accept bullshit forms of
bullshit participation.

— Julia King

These movements aren’t simply

about a mother grieving for their
child who has been lost. They’re
not simply about any other
family member, arguing that they
want to know the truth about
what happened to their loved one. I feel that power is more
They’re arguing against a system felt than seen.
of injustice, a system of violence,
which disproportionately affects — André Anderson
low-income and black and other
communities of colour within this
country. They’re arguing against
the system of injustice and
violence, which is fundamentally
the antithesis of the kind of love
that they want to see throughout
the world.

— Adam Elliott-Cooper
 Re-Think
Is fashion
fixable?
Paul Dillinger
Levi’s VP of global product innovation is
out to correct an industry behaving badly
Writer Nick Compton
Paul Dillinger is so fast-talking, fiercely
smart and in command of his subject that
it’s hard to keep up. Shocking stats and
damning evidence fly by. You can just about
hold on to his key arguments though.
Here’s one. ‘The demand for recycled
polyester has exceeded the supply of recycled
bottles, and brand new bottles are being
melted down to make polyester fibres,’ he
says. ‘The sustainability industry, when it gets
going, with fashion marketing behind it and
a willingness to never let the truth get in the
way of a good story, will come up with some
of the worst ideas imaginable.’ His point is
that demand for the more sustainable
materials and processes is being manipulated,
and generating entirely novel bad outcomes.
It’s not just greenwashing, it’s a new supply
chain of false promises.
And, Dillinger suggests, sustainability
messaging in the fashion industry now has its
own seasonal drive. Brands, big and small,
feel the pressure to come up with one fresh
planet-friendly pitch after another to push
sales, circularity being the new recycling and
marine plastic the new landfill. And this
seasonal demand for fresh temptations for
conscious consumers means that genuine
but slow-growing innovation – new, more
sustainable technologies, treatments,
094 ∑
materials and fibres – can wither and die.
‘You have to have new ethics every season,
reinvent your narrative around responsible
production every season. And that
innovation – that little fibre that could –
only got a year to actually prove it was viable
because a year on, it’s old sustainability news
and the sustainability marketing strategy
needs a new sustainability. But the
expectation that anything can come out of
the gate and achieve consumer experience
parity, consumer price point parity and
industrial viability parity in the first year is
far too high a bar.’
It’s part of Dillinger’s job to trace useful
innovations in the fashion industry, to see
if they can make it onto the big stage and
potentially pass the scalability test. And
watching them falter for the wrong reasons
hurts. Dillinger is vice president of global
production innovation at Levi’s. He has a
BFA in fashion design from Washington
University in St Louis, and received the first
ever Fulbright scholarship for fashion in
1994, studying at the Domus Academy in
Milan under Philippe Starck and Andrea
Branzi, among others. He then moved back
to New York and, over the next 16 years, did
design stints at Calvin Klein and DKNY.
More than a little disillusioned, he returned
to Washington University as a visiting
assistant professor at its school of design and
visual arts, but soon after took up a position
at the Levi’s-owned casualwear brand
Dockers. Dillinger was committed to
developing more sustainable manufacturing
strategies and better treatment of workers in
the apparel industry, and at Dockers he set up
the Wellthread programme, producing small
collections to explore sustainability solutions.
In 2014, he moved to the mother brand
(one of the biggest apparel manufacturers in
the world, with 2019 revenues at $5.8bn, and
hundreds of factories in more than 30
countries), taking the Wellthread programme
with him. He now heads the firm’s Eureka
Innovation Lab, based in San Francisco and
committed to developing product that does
better in terms of environmental and social
impact at every point along the supply chain.
Dillinger calls it a ‘proof of concept lab’,
testing the viability of new ideas on a small
scale, before they get bigger or prove to be
wrong turns, in which case they can be
refined or nixed with little harm done.
Considering his position, Dillinger does
not pull punches. He is a rare thing, a strident
advocate working to change things from the
inside, a senior figure within a fashion
industry giant willing to air its dirty laundry
in public while pushing to introduce real
change on the ground. And the lacerating
swipes at his own employer, and the openness
about the battles he has within that company,
make the message all the more powerful. But
he is also quick to praise Levi’s openness to
his agitation. ‘There is more willingness to sit
and learn here than any place I’ve ever
worked, and a real diligence around the
claims we make and the things we choose to
talk about.’
Cotton is what Dillinger talks most about.
He knows a lot of bad things about cotton
and cotton production, and particularly the
staggering amounts of fresh water involved.
According to Levi’s own lifecycle assessment,
the production of a single pair of jeans
requires 3,781 litres of water. And Dillinger
says that’s maybe a significant underestimate.
(Levi’s is not alone in its cotton dependency,
of course. Cotton is currently estimated to be
the most widely used material in the apparel
industry, and accounts for about a third of
global textile production.)
Water waste is the issue that really drives
him. Or perhaps the issue he can most easily
leverage to get his wider points across. It’s
what he calls a ‘carrier conversation’ for all
manner of environmental damage and social
impact the industry has to square up to. »
 Photography: Alexander Donka/Renewcell

∑
Newspaper

000
Re-Think
‘For me, it is a key driver, because it’s the
most easily personalised, and the most easily
measured and visualised.’ And being better
with water almost inevitably means being
better with other things. ‘I’ve found more
often than not, if you do good in one area,
there are all sorts of positive impacts in other
places. These issues are so closely related.’
Levi’s actually launched its Water<Less
programme back in 2011, and by next year
80 per cent of its jeans will be part of the
Water<Less programme. The initial focus has
been to reduce the amount of water used in
finishing jeans, which has, it says, saved 3.5bn
litres of water so far. Laudable enough, but
finishing only accounts for one per cent of
the water impact of producing a pair of jeans,
while 60 to 80 per cent is in the growing.
For Dillinger then, the ultimate solution
is not transforming the way cotton is grown
but in radically reducing the demand for
virgin, ‘first-generation’ cotton, and
developing a viable alternative that can work
its way through the supply chain much like
cotton can, and behave much like it in the
end product. Circular production is seen as
one solution and its appeal is powerful; it
promises to stop drawing on virgin materials
and stop creating landfill, a win-win.
Dillinger, though, is aware of circularity’s
terrible complications and contradictions,
especially within the fashion industry.
He believes that the promise of circularity
is being overplayed because it lets consumers
and brands off the hook; put simply, brands
can continue to throw new product at
consumers and grow sales without feeling bad
about it or getting a bad press. ‘A lot of the
buzz around that optimistic presentation of
the circular economy is actually people’s
excitement about the idea of not having to be
guilty of overconsumption. It has nothing to
do with the actual unlocking of credible
circular industrial ecology.’ And he suggests
that ‘circular industrial ecology’ is never
going to be able to cope with production
levels as they are. ‘Brands see circularity as
this multiplier of business, rather than what
it should be understood as, a powerful
constraint to business. And to produce
something viable for circular redeployment
is as hard a challenge as they come.’
A key part of the problem is that most
apparel simply isn’t designed for circularity.
The use of poly-cotton and nylon cotton
blends, for instance, makes the decoupling
of materials for recycling almost impossible,
or at least, the technologies to do it are not
yet commercially viable. The use of elastane
to add stretch creates the same problem.
And even products that claim to be 100
per cent cotton are usually saddled with
polyester stitching and labels.
Dillinger is for circularity as a ‘studious
and scientific approach to tackling
a real challenge’ but against it as a get-out
clause. And that approach has borne fruit.
Levi’s has just launched a recycled denim
jean that Dillinger insists is the ‘first true
expression of viable circularity in the apparel
‘To deliver those extraordinary water savings, that’s
the most successful design exercise of my career’
industry’. The jean is made of 20 per cent
recycled denim, treated by a Stockholm-
based company called Renewcell. Established
in 2012 by researchers from the KTH Royal
Institute of Technology, the company has
developed a process that shreds cotton and
other natural fibres and dissolves them into
a slurry. Dyes, as well as synthetic materials,
buttons and zippers, can then be removed
and the mush dried into a pulp called
Circulose. That is then pressed into large
sheets which are shipped to mills, which can
then dissolve it and force it through nozzles
to create a new fibre that acts pretty much
exactly like cotton. The new material is
recyclable and biodegradable. And crucially,
Renewcell has industrialised the process and
can now create 7,000 tons of the pulp every
year, enough for 30 million T-shirts.
The Circulose in the new jeans is a 50/50
blend of post-consumer cotton and lyocell,
a man-made fibre made using wood pulp.
Renewcell is working on increasing the
cotton count. And this jean uses 60 per cent
organic cotton, but Levi’s hopes to increase
the Circulose content over time. Dillinger
insists that, in terms of ‘strength, comfort,
durability’, the new jeans are on a par with
any other pair of Levi’s. The brand has even
put a pair of these jeans through the same
process again and made a ‘third-generation’
recycled jean. ‘Every other discussion of
circularity ever has been conjecture based
on a supply chain that doesn’t exist. But this
is the first step of that supply chain.’
At the Renewcell factory in Kristinehamn, Sweden,
a jeans waste bale, left, is waiting to be shredded
and dissolved into Circulose pulp, opposite, which can
then be turned into a new fibre that acts like cotton
 Levi’s has just launched a recycled jean that is the
‘first true expression of viable industrial circularity’
Hemp is another of Dillinger’s passion
projects. And he is determined to remove its
whiff of patchouli oil and hair-shirt suffering
and develop it as an alternative to cotton.
As a crop, it requires far less water than
cotton (the hemp he is working with is rain
fed), is more resistant to pests, and grows
more quickly. It also pulls in more CO2
than cotton.
Dillinger has spent the last few years
working with fibre technology specialists in
Belgium, refining Wellthread’s cottonised
hemp. Last year, they launched a white
denim jacket made with a blend of cottonised
hemp and cotton. ‘We needed the next
season to figure out how to dye it, and the
season after that to work out how to wash it
and treat it like denim,’ Dillinger says. This
year, they launched a pair of blue 511 jeans
using a blend of the new hemp fibre, recycled
cotton waste and lyocell. This jean used
30 per cent cottonised hemp, but Dillinger
says a 55 per cent version should be out next
year. ‘When you see the jeans and feel the
jeans, you would have no idea the hemp was
there. To do that and deliver those
extraordinary water savings, with certainty
about the health of the soil and the water
systems in the community where that fibre
was cultivated, that’s the most successful
design exercise of my career.’
In some ways the design world has enjoyed
and embraced its front-line role in the
sustainability wars, the emphasis on design
thinking as a possible cure-all, and the
presumption that increasing sustainability is
fundamentally a design problem. But as much
as he is a designer committed to science and
process, Dillinger says that messaging and
curbing consumption are the central drivers
of a more sustainable fashion industry. It’s
behaviours that really need to change.
The fashion industry is producing far too
much stuff far too quickly. And we are
quickly getting rid this stuff: a 2017 McKinsey
report said that consumers were keeping
clothing items about half as long as they did
15 years before. ‘We have to design strategies
that don’t intentionally teach the consumer
that the thing they buy now, that could
make them pretty now, is going to make them
ugly and undateable next season. And in
terms of sustainability messaging, we’re
relying on guilt and science. I don’t think
that’s how the orchestration and engineering
of desire goes down’.
His central sustainability message is
very simple: buy less, buy better. ‘In the late
1950s, 12 per cent of discretionary household
income was spent on apparel in the United
States,’ he says. ‘Right now, it’s down to
between two and three per cent, but the
quantity of apparel bought has gone up
eight-fold. Some value has had to be extracted
in order to make that equation work, and
that value is quality.’
The only time he sticks to anything
resembling a corporate line is when he talks
about the durability of a pair of Levi’s jeans.
But he has a point. A pair of 501s has the
unshouty sustainability of an Eames lounge
chair or a Fender Telecaster; they have a
fixed, iconic, beyond-fashion design, they are
easy to repair, get better with age, and people
usually keep them and then pass them on or
sell them. They retain, if not increase, their
value. This is the sustainability of durability,
of a thing treasured and cherished, that can
get forgotten in the understandable rush to
embrace recycling or circularity.
Too much of our fashion is not durable,
too fast, too cheap, too careless, and designed
to be disposable. Some last guilt and
science then: 50 years ago, the Aral Sea in
Central Asia was the fourth largest lake in
the world. The former Soviet Union decided
to develop cotton farming around the lake,
using the waters that fed it for irrigation.
The lake is now all but gone, and an area the
size of Denmark is desiccated mud flats.
What was marshes and wetlands has also
disappeared. The environmental and human
cost has been catastrophic.
‘There are UK and US brands still
sourcing cotton from Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan,’ says Dillinger. ‘They are still
participating in the system that took the
Aral Sea away. It has turned it into a toxic
desert that blows up plumes of dust laced
with pesticide, herbicide and fertiliser.
Our industry has delivered upon the people
in the area some of the highest infant
mortality rates in the world. Where’s that in
the price point? How is that reflected in the
cost of goods? We’re totally unaware of these
externalised costs, and if we did understand
them we would want to cry.’ ∂
levistrauss.com; renewcell.com
∑ 097

Can you create
a perfect circle?
Map Project Office
The industrial design consultancy’s radical, waste-
eliminating overhaul of mainstream mass production
Graphics Studio.Build Writer Jonathan Bell
What is the circular economy? What does it look like?
How can the cascade of consumption be redirected
so that it turns inwards and forms a holistic,
unbreakable circle, a virtuous loop that saves materials,
saves energy, and cuts down on emissions, pollution
and waste? Is it even desirable to disassemble systems
that have evolved over centuries, wipe the slate clean
and start from scratch? These were just a few of the
questions asked by Map Project Office at the outset
of its work for Wallpaper* Re-Made.
To challenge this apparent lack of accountability,
we wanted a team of designers with an intimate
understanding of the complexities of modern industry.
Map Project Office was set up by Edward Barber and
Jay Osgerby in 2012 as a counterpoint to the authored
product design output of their own studio and the
architecture and interior focus of their Universal
Design Studio. Map focuses on crafted physical
products for an increasingly virtual age. By bridging
the gap between people and technology, the real
world and the virtual, it looks to solve problems
conjured up by the digital era.
Through a series of online workshops, Wallpaper*
and Map sought to find a new approach to solve
endemic problems. As part of Re-Made, Map is
Re-Think
proposing a radical overhaul. ‘We want to challenge
the way products are made, with new infrastructure,
and new systems,’ says Map’s Will Howe. ‘As designers,
we’re considering the whole lifecycle. It’s about
designing for things to come apart and designing in an
industry where some things are moving much faster
than others, and how we negate the impact that has.
Ultimately, the question is, can we develop a new
terminology about product architecture that would
be interesting and quite disruptive?’
As a first launch stage, Map is creating a speculative
platform, Map Industries. Disruption can come from
any direction. Only around 40 per cent of consumer
electronics products are currently recycled in the
EU. The majority of CE-certified products become
landfill the minute they fail, become obsolete or are
simply discarded. ‘If we’ve got to the recycling stage,
then we’ve effectively failed,’ notes Map’s Jamie Cobb.
Map believes that a tipping point is looming. Rather
than perpetuating the well-worn cliché of ‘make do
and mend’, mainstream mass production must learn
to incorporate circular thinking. An idealised system
would look like a closed loop, a true ‘ecosystem’
whereby all materials used are simply ploughed back
into manufacturing once their usage cycle ends. »
∑ 099
 Rather than perpetuating the ‘make do
and mend’ cliché, mass production must
learn to incorporate circular thinking
Power Issues and Embedded Energy
One element that is universal to every form of
consumable, from smartphones and transportation to
food, clothing and furniture, is power. The smart
devices we increasingly rely on manage to sap relatively
tiny amounts, while familiar domestic objects still
make up a sizeable proportion of our daily power
consumption. And yet power remains one of the most
elusive of all commodities, measured in units that
many people find hard to relate to.
In the discussions and workshops with Map, the
idea of promoting and accentuating the role of
embedded energy came up again and again. Map points
out that a key aspect of true cyclical design is how
to accommodate the embedded energy contained
within a product before it has even left the store.
Together, materials, manufacturing, transportation
and distribution consist of about 75 per cent of a
typical small consumer electronic device, with the
actual power consumed during its usable lifetime just
15 per cent and the energy and time devoted to end-of-
life processes an even smaller percentage – around one
per cent according to Apple. For larger or more energy-
intensive goods, like washing machines, fridges and
kettles, the proportions are somewhat different.
A Bigger Circle
Circularity is an attainable and desirable goal. And the
way to a more circular system is to massively increase
the diameter of the ‘circle’ of ‘design-manufacture-
100 ∑
consumption-reuse’ so that each segment effectively
balances out the other and ‘reuse’ feeds back into the
loop. This is a massive challenge to product designers
and manufacturers operating in a longstanding culture
of ‘sell and forget’. Map hopes that this preliminary
research will ultimately confront these behaviours and
direct talent to create better products.
Some products appear better suited to looping than
others, but design for disassembly needs to become the
rule, not the exception. Companies are being more
explicit about their ambitions in this area, like Apple,
which states ‘we want to one day manufacture products
without mining any new materials from the earth’.
Ikea are ‘committed to designing all of our products to
be 100 per cent circular from the beginning, using only
renewable or recycled materials, and to developing
circular capabilities in our supply chain’.
Big as these companies are, they acknowledge this
will be a collaborative effort between designers,
manufacturers, distributors, retailers and legislators.
While a growing percentage of people identify strongly
with moves to cut their personal consumption, this Above, this speculative
represents a tiny fraction of overall energy use; exploration of a product’s
life cycle considers when its
meaningful change must come from industry itself. various individual components
might eventually degrade and
Endurance and Wave Theory become unusable over time,
and how these components
Time and time again, the question of ‘product
could be separated to allow
endurance’ is raised. Map’s initial research suggested a product to last longer and
we treat products as if they have defined lifecycles, yet stay desirable
or waves. A taxonomy of these lifecycle waves might Source: Map Industries

start with ‘long wave’ products like speakers, screens
or radios, wherein the base technology isn’t expected
to evolve significantly, ensuring that the use value
remains constant throughout the product’s lifespan.
We know that a traditional speaker can easily last for
30 years. But a smart speaker is also a computer, with
all the in-built obsolescence and compatibility issues
that entails. ‘Mid wave’ products might have half that
expected lifespan, including regularly used domestic
goods like washing machines, fridges and toasters.
Finally, we have the ‘short wave’ category, the fast-
moving gadgetry that is either engineered for a glorious
but short lifespan or is designed to be made swiftly
obsolete by a more powerful, desirable successor. These
include the smartphone, certain toys, cameras, other
smart devices and even batteries themselves.
More From Less
‘Making do’ need not mean arresting progress, nor
should it impact on our product experiences. As key
technologies become more discreet and embedded, it’s
theoretically easier to upgrade our experiences without
resorting to all-new hardware; a simple, compact device
transforms a TV into a smart device, or a high-quality
speaker becomes an increasingly intelligent digital
assistant. Some suggest that mass acceptance of over-
the-air enhancements will result in the KonMari-ing
of society and the creation of this fabled loop. This
disregards the reality that sometimes it really is more
sustainable to switch to a brand-new product.
Better Ageing
Some products will obviously age well because of their
materials and construction, as well as the stability of
their technology and function – a chair, for example.
As Map points out, we’re now tied to an economic
system based around rapid product evolution and
diversification. Traditional characteristics of ‘long
wave’ products – such as patination, upgrade, repair
and renewal – are scarcely considered. Map’s experience
is with design for mass production, not limited runs
or one-offs. As a result, they are well placed to reshape
the system. As designer Matthew Cockerill, working
alongside the team at Map, points out, ‘How products
Designing for endurance, repair,
upgrade and reuse will be the new
benchmarks for mass production
Re-Think
are made is dictated not only by the designer but to
a greater extent by the company tasking the designer
and setting the brief. So we need to think like
companies, not designers.’ Their response is to set up
Map Industries as the antithesis of the dominant ‘sell
and forget’ model. Designing for endurance, repair,
upgrade and reuse will be the new benchmarks.
Real Things in a Service Economy
Circularity must also embrace desire; the long-life
product is part of a service, not a disposable asset.
This is one of the keys to a circular future: the more
integrated the product is to a particular service, the
more value can be attached to physical longevity.
The emerging ‘access economy’ is already the
mainstay of most media operations, where the idea of
physically owning a copy of a film or album is anathema
to millions of consumers. Companies as diverse as
Philips, Citroën and FoundPop no longer treat their
wares as physical objects; you pay for the amount of
light you need, not the bulbs and fixtures, or you
pay for access to a city car or the short-term rental
of furnishings for a pop-up unit.
Long Waves and Closed Loops
Display, consumption and identity are tightly bound
together in a closed-loop system of their own. Yet many
of our current behaviours are driven by a product’s
economic life – the point at which it is more expensive
to maintain than replace. As Map suggests, we are
at a point where the theories that have concerned
academics for decades must rapidly relate to real life.
The context in which we are creating, producing
and consuming products must change. There is no
sense in castigating the consumer if there is no genuine
alternative. Map Industries wants to redefine the
physical artefact for a long wave future and a truly
circular product ecosystem, embracing creativity to
ensure that desire drives us down the right path. If the
most sustainable behaviour of all is to keep the product
you already own, there is huge scope for shifting
lifecycle waves to be made more explicit, more desirable
and, most importantly of all, more achievable.∂
mapprojectoffice.com
 What’s the problem
with crushed avocado?
Fernando Laposse
Exploring the devastation to local environments wrought
by monoculture in his homeland, the Mexican designer
harnesses his art to effect change
Artwork Fernando Laposse Writers James Burke and Molly Mandell

102 ∑

Above, monarch butterflies at El Rosario reserve
in Mexico; their seasonal habitat is threatened
by the clearance of land for avocado production
Opposite, an illustration of avocados by Laposse,
among his work highlighting the problems caused
by the scale and manner of their cultivation
Fernando Laposse takes a whole-systems
approach to design. His work extends far
beyond aesthetics to take on the politics of
food, the marginalisation of indigenous
communities, biodiversity and globalisation.
Scratch beneath the surface, and a table or
bench can suddenly reveal much deeper
meaning. ‘Design isn’t a magic wand that will
solve all of our problems,’ the London-based
Mexican designer says. ‘But it certainly can
be used to communicate them in a simpler
way.’ In other words, Laposse wants to make
you think.
Totomoxtle is a veneer material made
from the husks of native Mexican corn, and
perhaps Laposse’s best-known endeavour.
The husks are heated, flattened and glued
onto fibreboards before being laser-cut, and
the resulting material is then applied to
furniture and interior surfaces. After Nafta,
the trade pact between Mexico, Canada and
the United States, took effect in 1994, local
production chains for native corn species
were practically eliminated. Laposse is eager
for his audience to see past bright, yellow
corn, a result of monoculture farming and
the homogenisation of crops, to the heirloom
varieties from his home country that come in
deep purples, pinks and delicate creams.
Behind the scenes, the project takes on
a more serious socioeconomic mission. In
Mexico, there is a popular saying, ‘sin maíz
no hay país’, meaning that without corn,
there is no country. In producing Totomoxtle,
Laposse partners with the Mixtec community
of Tonahuixtla to offer corn farmers – some
Re-Think
of whom are descendants of the very
Mesoamericans who domesticated the crop –
an additional source of income, while also
encouraging the long-term preservation of
these endangered strains.
Sustainability may be a key tenet in
Laposse’s work, but he suggests that it’s time
to readdress what that concept means
altogether. We’re still fixated on a definition
from three decades ago, Laposse explains,
which essentially asks, ‘How can we develop
while ensuring that the next generation will
have the same access to and volume of
resources that we did?’ He proposes going
further, instead establishing a greater
wealth of resources for the future. He believes
that one pitfall of sustainability is its use
as a means for production. Rather than
pursuing technological innovation, Laposse
rediscovers wealth in communities such as
Tonahuixtla, whose knowledge and
traditional methods have largely been cast
aside in a modern world.
On top of redefining sustainability,
Laposse aspires to move away from human-
centred design. ‘If you assume that the
centre of the universe is man, and you’re only
designing for the wellbeing of man, you’re
not really taking into account the natural
environment,’ he says. He advocates the
pursuit of an improved system at a much
broader level, and as such prefers to practise
interspecies design.
Laposse spent much of his childhood
visiting his grandmother in the Mexican state
of Michoacán, where high altitude and »
 heavy rainfall prove ideal for his upcoming
focus: the avocado. The superfood, like
corn, has also experienced a decline in crop
diversity as its global market strengthens,
but more so, its production in the area has
led to oppression and ecological devastation.
Laposse aims to expose these concerns in
his next project, addressing the interplay
between humans, other species and natural
resources more head on.
Currently, some five billion kilos of
avocado are produced around the world each
year, and Michoacán has become the leading
global producer. ‘It was November in
Reykjavik,’ Laposse recalls of a teaching stint
in Iceland. ‘And I was seeing these mountains
of avocados with their stickers from Mexico.’
In that moment, he realised the depth of the
world’s extraordinary obsession with the
fruit, now often referred to as green gold.
‘It became sort of like the hipster brunch,
propagated by this idea of health and lifestyle
and, to some degree, wealth.’
As demand for the avocado grew, so did
local repercussions. Drug cartels quickly
developed an interest in the trade and began
to forcefully eradicate any hindrance
to the industry. As orchards overflowed
into protected forests, these criminal
organisations stimulated illegal logging.
While deforestation may aid the avocado
trade, it poses a threat to one of North
America’s most valued insects, the monarch
butterfly. In the heart of Michoacán lies
El Rosario reserve, home to pine and
oyamel fir trees and, each winter, millions
of monarchs. As more land is cleared
to make room for farms, these trees that
104 ∑
protect the butterflies’ seasonal habitat
continue to disappear.
Laposse intends to guide the rhetoric
surrounding the avocado industry in a similar
trajectory to that of palm oil. ‘Awareness of
palm oil’s impact has had a great deal to do
with the story of orangutans,’ he says in
reference to the tens of thousands of great
apes that died as a result of palm oil
deforestation. ‘It’s interesting that when you
put the face of a wild species to a problem,
it becomes much more relatable to people.’
Informing avocado consumers about the
vulnerable monarch butterfly, Laposse posits,
could serve as a gateway to discuss other
industry-related issues, including violence.
Laposse visited El Rosario sanctuary as
a child but returned in January 2019 with
his wife, a radio journalist reporting a story
for the BBC. Their research granted them
unprecedented access to the centre of the
monarch cluster, as well as an introduction to
Homero Gómez, a conservationist and fierce
champion of the reserve. Gómez, who was
outspoken about illegal logging’s threat on
the butterfly habitat, was found murdered
this past January, just one year later. His
death only further fuelled Laposse’s desire to
incorporate the avocado into his practice.
While compiling photo and video
documentation, Laposse is performing
material research to create a collection of
objects that reflect on his studies. So far, he
has been dyeing textiles with avocado pits
and skins, which produce a peach-pink hue.
He also plans to create interventions with
sick oyamel trees that are felled to maintain
the forest, perhaps lacquering the wood with
an avocado soap. With the final products, he
strives to inspire heightened consciousness.
‘Everything is connected,’ he says. ‘We really
have to be mindful about what we consume
and how we consume it.’ He doesn’t expect
his project to overhaul the devastating
consequences of the avocado trade, but with
increased awareness, he hopes that people
will demand transparency and make more
informed decisions.
Laposse harks back once more to the
significance of the butterflies and Gómez’s
tragic death in his efforts. ‘When you’re
talking about topics like global trade,
worldwide consumption, and violence, you
forget that there are people involved in all of
this,’ he muses. ‘Once you link it to Homero
and his family, the rest of the rangers and the
forest, you start to create more empathy for
the topic. That’s something really needed in
design – to truly create that personal and
human attachment to a story.’
Thus far, 2020 has been a traumatic year,
but Laposse reminds us that design can play
a powerful and proactive role in effecting
change. ‘It has this ability to synthesise very
complex ideas and present them in a more
palatable way to the general public,’ he says.
‘Design connects all of these different people
and aspects that otherwise may be
disconnected, or makes certain links that
perhaps a journalist, scientist or farmer
couldn’t.’ It becomes apparent that Laposse
frequently transcends the role of designer
to become an activist. ‘How do we repair all
of these broken systems?’ Laposse asks. And
then he dives right back into his research. ∂
fernandolaposse.com
Left, Laposse’s study
of a monarch butterfly
and avocados; and
avocado-oil soap, infused
with avocado leaves.
‘I also envision creating
large objects, carved
out of solid blocks of
avocado soap,’ he says
Opposite, his ideas for
creating objects from
oyamel wood – from
felled sick trees, for
example. The tree is
endemic to central and
southern Mexico, and
is the only tree in which
the monarch butterfly
nests. The objects would
be sealed with avocado
oil soap, which acts
as a wax or varnish
 Re-Think

‘Design has this ability to synthesise very complex

ideas and present them in a more palatable way
to the general public’
 Can lino live forever?
Christien Meindertsma
The experimental Dutch designer has been working with floor maker
Forbo on processes that give new creative purpose to unwanted old product
Photography Mathijs Labadie Writer Rosa Bertoli

106 ∑

‘I am generally very much wowed by linoleum’,
Christien Meindertsma says. The peculiar statement
comes halfway through an intense chat that has so
far touched upon pigs, flax farming and the near-
impossible task of producing paper from American
prairie grass. By this point in the conversation, it is
clear that the things that wow the Dutch designer are
rather out of the ordinary.
Since graduating from Design Academy Eindhoven
in 2003, Meindertsma has developed a unique voice
in the design world. Her projects dive deep into our
relationships with objects and materials, our use of
resources and the history behind our daily habits.
Although she is generally comfortable with the label
A colourful chart from
Meindertsma’s research,
of designer (she has also been called an artist and
showing the new material researcher), Meindertsma’s approach reaches far
that could be created when beyond products and concepts. Among her most
applying her reworking notable projects was a 2007 book titled PIG 05049,
process to the various hues
of linoleum from a 1990s analysing the animal as a source of raw materials used
Forbo sample book in a wide range of products, from cigarettes to concrete.
Re-Think
Another project, and accompanying book, Bottom
Ash Observatory, was subtitled An Incinerated Municipal
Solid Waste Expedition, revealing the wealth of different
materials found in a 25kg bucket of ash from
incinerated household waste, which the designer
sieved, separated and catalogued.
‘I like to go where the inventions are,’ says
Meindertsma. ‘I don’t think I am very good at designing
from behind a desk. I can only really learn through a
process, and the shape automatically follows the
research. Research is my way of designing.’ One of her
passions, she says, is learning about things she can’t
possibly find online.
Among Meindertsma’s most notable projects to date
is her ‘Flax’ chair, created in 2015. Five years earlier, the
designer had bought an entire flax harvest, about ten
tonnes, to find out if it could be processed into a new,
environmentally friendly textile. The project developed
into a collaboration with natural-fibre specialist Enkev
and Label Breed, an organisation that promotes »
 Top left, old linoleum from
a school provided raw
material for Meindertsma’s
experiments. She found that
pressing the waste flooring in
a machine called a calender,
top right, produced a new
material more like a ceramic
Left, one of a series of tile
compositions the designer
has created using the
technique to repurpose old
Forbo linoleum samples,
showcasing the colours

108 ∑

‘I was standing next to this mini calender machine.
I tried throwing old linoleum in. What happened then
was magic: the machine started making new linoleum’
cooperation between designers and manufacturers. The
resulting chair is a fitting example of Meindertsma’s
approach: using a simple domestic object to convey the
weight of in-depth research. She created a new
composite material using layers of woven and felted
flax, heat-pressed into the shape of a chair. ‘Within
the process, the chair was the right product to present
this material,’ she says. ‘You can sit on a chair, it’s quite
an intimate, physical object.’
The ‘Flax’ chair brought attention to the designer’s
sustainable approach and her ability to think circularly.
Dutch company Forbo, maker of linoleum (which the
brand refers to as Marmoleum, for its colourful,
marbled surface) picked up on Meindertsma’s works
and got in touch. ‘We felt a connection with Christien’s
flax project because linseed oil [derived from flax]
is an important element of linoleum, alongside other
natural ingredients such as wood, pine-tree resin,
limestone and jute,’ says Peter Albertz, Forbo’s
innovation manager.
In 2019, Meindertsma was tasked with researching
the possibilities of recycling old linoleum and designing
products that could be made with the resulting
material. Forbo had already investigated the potential
of circular manufacturing. A year earlier, design
student Jaromir van Vliet (then an intern at the
company), responding to a circular challenge from
Rotterdam-based start-up incubator BlueCity, had
developed a way of using heat to turn scraps of old
linoleum into the endlessly recyclable Renoleum.
In itself, linoleum is a fairly green material. ‘The
weighted average of the Marmoleum product range
has been independently assessed as CO2 neutral from
cradle to gate, without the need for carbon offsetting,’
says Albertz. ‘It is one of the world’s most sustainable
non-PVC, resilient flooring materials.’ The problem
with linoleum lies in its afterlife: once removed from
floors, parts of glue and cement stick to it, making
it impossible to properly recycle (it is usually mixed
in to make cement, or sent to landfill).
Van Vliet’s Renoleum employed specialist machines
to granulate the linoleum as well as the cement and
glue parts; the resulting granules were then blended
into a new board material. After experimenting with
this new composite, Meindertsma wanted to go one
step further. But first, typically, she wanted to go back
to the source of the material.
She took herself to a school in the Netherlands
where linoleum was being torn off the floors. She
also looked at an old sample book from the 1990s
(a collection of shades titled ‘Rhapsody in Colour’),
as she wanted to discover and recover as wide a
range of linoleum as she could.
Re-Think
Her eureka moment came while she was experimenting
in the Forbo factory. ‘I was standing next to this mini
calender machine [a tool composed of two high-
pressure rollers to flatten materials into sheets], and
just tried throwing old linoleum in. What happened
then was magic: the machine started making new
linoleum,’ she explains. ‘So we discovered that you
can shred the material, but you can also put it in the
calender, which blends it again.’ By doing that, she
notes, the jute fibre becomes stronger and the oils are
reactivated. The resulting material is drier and harder
than the original, more like ceramic.
‘It’s a very simple thing, but they had never done it,’
Meindertsma says, as she likens her design process to
a programmer’s work: ‘You just find the language that
has the least steps but is the most elegant.’
The collaboration with Forbo is still in progress;
although she has identified what to do with the old
linoleum, she is now looking at where to take this new
material. Her first designs are a series of tiles in
different shapes, repurposing old sample books from
Forbo to create compositions that show the colour
range. But the possibilities are quite broad, as she is
exploring different scales and manufacturing
possibilities. ‘The material is a stepping stone towards
other things,’ she says.
Meindertsma’s diverse work has been recognised by
design institutions globally, most recently with a solo
exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Aptly titled
‘Everything Connects’, the exhibition focused on her
Flax Project, and Fibre Market, for which she examined
1,000 wool sweaters to reveal how their material
composition differed from the content on their label,
before shredding them, using a fibre-sorting machine.
‘Christien Meindertsma is a fearless researcher and has
been able to get behind the scenes of exceptionally
proprietary industries to interrogate issues concerning
social and environmental sustainability,’ says Zöe Ryan,
the Art Institute’s chair and curator of architecture and
design. ‘She asks questions and realises projects that
help us engage critically with the world and open our
minds to inventive ways of thinking about design and
the role of the designer.’
To Meindertsma, this process is innate, built into
her design thinking. ‘I like to be open to things,
taking different turns than you expect; I work so there
is space for this to happen,’ she says. Her collaboration
with Forbo has so far given her the opportunity for
discovery and has allowed her to freely experiment, and
her approach has proven to fit right in with the
company’s thinking. Says Albertz: ‘We see Christien as
a passionate ambassador for linoleum.’ ∂
christienmeindertsma.com; forbo.com
 Re-Think
Is micro-making
the future?
Nate Petre
The design engineer and maker of a compostable
surfboard believes communities can 3D print their way
to greater autonomy. He’s also planning his next board,
exploring waste and enduring beauty with Atlein
Photography / Writer Retts Wood
When Nate Petre’s girlfriend drove her
motorbike off the side of a mountain in
the summer of 2014, it was a eureka moment.
‘I’d customised the lights and front end
using my 3D printer. Once I’d dragged my
girlfriend back out of the bushes (thankfully
unharmed), and looked at the bike, I realised
that, with the CAD in the cloud, all I’d
need to repair it was someone with a printer,’
says Petre.
The idea of Disruptive Distributed
Manufacturing (DDR) – individuals and
communities manufacturing locally using 3D
printers, rather than relying on international
factories – had been rolling around Petre’s
head for a while, but it was on that Basque
hairpin bend that he first saw how smoothly
it could work: instead of ordering new
parts and waiting, he could simply print
out the pieces he needed, anywhere in the
world, with a 3D printer.
Back at Imperial College in London,
where he was researching his PhD, Petre
realised that his interest lay in the socio-
economic and environmentally helpful
possibilities of 3D printing. But he also found
himself pining for the ocean.
‘I’ve always loved the sea, and surfing.
I was trying to figure out whether it would be
possible to print surfboards, and maybe make
surfing more sustainable in the process.’
A chance meeting with Jeff Hamaoui, a
like-minded Silicon Valley strategist, led to a
110 ∑
grant from Nasa’s Ames Lab, and the pair set
about sourcing a bio-based printing material.
‘We found a company called Algix, which
was making a biodegradable filament from a
mixture of PLA [a bioplastic made from corn]
and invasive algae, which grow in bodies of
water in the American South as a by-product
of fertiliser pollution.’
After a few months slaving over a
printer, Petre presented the world’s first fully
compostable 3D-printed surfboard at a
sustainability event in Portland, Oregon.
His next step was to build a printer big
enough to produce the surfboard in one piece.
‘I had so much to learn, but if I messed up I
could easily get more material, as I
had access to everything. I didn’t entirely
address the question of DDR, which was
more about being able to print in the jungle
or in an impoverished country.’
His chance to further investigate his
theories came when he met philanthropist
Francesca von Habsburg (W*98), who invited
him to continue his material research at
Alligator Head, her marine conservation
foundation in Jamaica.
‘My idea was to go to Jamaica, turn
invasive seaweed into a bioplastic, and print
from it – which was incredibly naive. I hadn’t
realised how difficult it would be to work Nate Petre in Jamaica
without access to the supply chain. Working with sections of a
surfboard 3D-printed
in a tiny, ill-equipped kitchen, using using local recycled
household products like drain cleaner in » ocean plastic
Newspaper

∑ 000
Re-Think
‘I’d started off printing motorbike parts, then a
surfboard, but the endgame was always to print
something useful – roof tiles, or water pumps’
lieu of the chemistry lab I needed, I managed
to create a thin, encapsulating membrane
from seaweed. But producing filament would
have taken much longer, and required
shipping in chemicals.’
To add to his woes, large chunks of his
printer were lost en route to Kingston,
and with no access to filament, he couldn’t
use his desktop machine to reprint them.
‘I was in the local mini-market,
despondently trying to figure out which
products I could harvest chemicals from,
when I spotted the reels of strimmer cable,
looking very like filament.’
The strimmer cable turned out to be made
from nylon – which prints well – and was
exactly the right diameter for his print head.
He’d found his material. ‘The next step was
realising, in this very humid climate, that
materials need to be super dry. This time the
off-the-shelf answer was a food dehydrator.’
It also became clear that dealing with the
waves of waste plastic washing into the
Caribbean was more urgent than creating
an alternative material. Using machines built
from the open-source plans of community
recycling project Precious Plastic, Petre set
up a micro recycling plant at Alligator Head,
available for the community to use, alongside
the printer.
Petre was also introduced to Nachson
Mimran, whose foundation To.org
helps developing communities ‘challenge
the humanitarian industrial complex’
and become self-sufficient. Mimran
commissioned Petre to set up a similar hub
in an impoverished neighbourhood in
Kampala, Uganda.
‘In Jamaica and Uganda, I found endless
like-minded souls – engaged and interested
people who wanted to provide for their
families and to change their communities
through grassroots projects. Because I come
from a background of privilege, I was armed
with the knowledge to set up machines and
teach people to use them. I’d started off
Left and opposite, earlier
this year, Petre worked
with Makerversity
to establish a micro-
manufacturing site at
Somerset House in
London. Working with
a small team of
Makerversity members
and using open-source
designs, 65 3D printers
have been creating
1,500 face visors for
health workers every
day. The process uses
bioplastic and Petre
and the team have
been testing tweaked
designs to improve
comfort and durability
printing motorbike parts, then a surfboard,
but the endgame was always to print
something useful – roof tiles, or water pumps,
things like that – and use the readily available
plastic waste to do that. Polio is an issue in
the area of Kampala where I was working, and
people with lost or withered limbs make pads
using discarded flip-flops, which are battered
and ill-fitting. With the printer, they could
custom-make pads to fit individuals’ needs.
‘You fly in with this stuff in your suitcase,
set it up in a few hours, and transform a
community’s ability to answer needs for itself.
That’s the crux of this concept.’
While Petre’s experiences in Jamaica and
Uganda highlighted the potential of his ideas,
exposing flaws along the way and allowing
him to iron them out, the real test came
closer to home. He had just taken a space at
Makerversity, a tech hub and studio complex
in the basement of Somerset House in
London, when it became clear that the new
virus sweeping across Wuhan would not be
 ‘You fly in with this stuff in your suitcase, set it up
in a few hours, and transform a community’s ability
to answer needs for itself. That’s the crux of this’

contained. As Covid-19 reached Europe, he
realised that his plans to develop DDR had
a new urgency: with China in lockdown,
a huge part of the world’s manufacturing
capability was out of action – and without
it, the UK was in trouble.
Working with Dr Dominic Pimenta, who
had co-founded the Heroes charity to support
NHS workers, Petre set up 65 printers at
Makerversity and refined open-source designs
to create a CE-certified face shield, eventually
printing 1,500 per day.
With the print farm now running
smoothly, Petre is considering his next move.
‘I’ve been cycling to Makerversity, and I look
down and think – could I make the bicycle
I’m riding? If not the bike, then parts of it?
Here’s this essential mode of transport
worldwide, pretty much always factory-made
and shipped. But what if each key worker
anywhere in the world was to get a free,
locally produced bicycle made from locally
sourced and recycled materials?’
Biomaterials remain at the forefront of his
thinking, too. The most common material
to print from is PLA, ‘but what people
don’t necessarily realise is that it’s only
commercially compostable. If you put it in
your home compost, or send it to landfill, it
takes, at the very least, 80 years to biodegrade.
I spent my twenties and early thirties
working as a cook, and thinking about food
led me to look at kitchen waste, which has
led me, a decade later, to look at how food
waste could be used in manufacturing.
Shrimp shells, chicken feathers, mycelium –
they could all, theoretically, make bioplastic.’
He’s also thinking about surfboards again,
this time in collaboration with fashion label
Atlein’s Antonin Tron (W*252). ‘3D printing,
particularly in plastic, is seen as disposable.
It’s either used for prototyping or making
something cheaply. Antonin and I want to
create a surfboard from things like waste
fishing nets, but allow it to age with beauty.
Humans always had this appreciation for a
made object that would last for generations,
gathering scars as it passes from hand to
hand, but we’ve gotten so good at chemistry
that we expect things to look flawless.
We’re so used to everything being new and
disposable that if something breaks we
replace it, and that “Amazonisation” of our
consumer spending habits has led to
ridiculously short object lifespans, and ever
more waste.
‘Antonin is interested in lacquer work
– layers of protection that over time develop
flaws and shadows and, with that, a story and
value. I’m really looking forward to exploring
depth and age as we mine waste resources,
and printing something that eventually has
heritage and patina.
‘At the moment, printing is seen as a
novelty. Give it ten years and I feel like you
might see a lot of locally manufactured
goods in your house. Some of them might
even end up being heirlooms.’ ∂
nathanielpetre.com; atlein.com

∑ 113
 Re-
Our Wallpaper*
Re-Made
reading list
Design as an Attitude
by Alice Rawsthorn
Operating Manual for
Spaceship Earth
by R Buckminster Fuller
Happy City: Transforming our
Lives through Urban Design
by Charles Montgomery
We Should All be Feminists
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast
Fashion and the Future of Clothes
by Dana Thomas
Constructed Narratives
by David Adjaye
The Life of Plants:
A Metaphysics of Mixture
by Emanuele Coccia
Fewer, Better Things:
The Hidden Wisdom of Objects
by Glenn Adamson
114
connect
∑
Beyond the New.
On the Agency of Things
by Hella Jongerius and
Louise Schouwenberg
How to be an Antiracist
by Ibram X Kendi
The Death and Life of Great
American Cities
by Jane Jacobs
How to Do Nothing: Resisting
the Attention Economy
by Jenny Odell
The Uninhabitable Earth
by David Wallace-Wells
How to Thrive in the Next Economy:
Designing Tomorrow’s World Today
by John Thackara
Doughnut Economics:
Seven Ways to Think Like
a 21st-Century Economist
by Kate Raworth
Broken Nature:
Design Takes on Human Survival
by Paola Antonelli and Ala Tannir
Woman and Nature:
The Roaring Inside Her
by Susan Griffin
Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson
The Revolutionary Genius of Plants:
A New Understanding of
Plant Intelligence and Behavior
by Stefano Mancuso
You are Not a Gadget:
A Manifesto
by Jaron Lanier
The Age of Living Machines:
How Biology Will Build the Next
Technology Revolution
by Susan Hockfield
The Beauty of Everyday Things
by Soetsu Yanagi
Design, Nature, and Revolution:
Toward a Critical Ecology
by Tomás Maldonado
Invisible Women:
Exposing Data Bias in a World
Designed for Men
by Caroline Criado Perez
Design for the Real World:
Human Ecology and Social Change
by Victor Papanek
For more, see Wallpaper.com ∏
 HAUTE NATURE
¨

© 2020 Antolini Luigi & C. S.p.a. - All Rights reserved.

Patagonia ÒOriginalÓ (Granite) DESIGN ALESSANDRO LA SPADA

Antolini believes in the power of what is real. Mother Nature’s tremendous

force distilled into astonishing creations. A fragment of the stream of life, the
heartbeat of the ages, the skin of our planet. It is purity in its most perfect
form: design, colors and pattern handed to us by history.
Designed by nature, perfected in Italy.
antolini.com
BORN IN LE BRASSUS

RAISED AROUND THE WORLD

AU D E M A R S PI G U E T B O U T I Q U E S LO N D O N : S LOA N E S T R E E T · H A R R O D S F I N E WATC H E S
AP HOUSE LONDON : NEW BOND STREET