By Maksis Darzins
As sustainability becomes more of a concern in our day to day lives, designers will be responsible for creating change that pushes away from the ideas of consumerism and mass production. Designers will have to use their skills to develop creative solutions for everyday activities with an ever-larger emphasis on sustainable and ethical design practices.
The Welcome to Wasteland exhibition shows positive steps to a cleaner future. The exhibition highlights the positive change being made by many architects, industrial designers, furniture designers and design researchers across Australia to achieve a cleaner future through transforming waste to functional products.
The Welcome to Wasteland exhibition was displayed at Compound Interest, which is a single room gallery hidden between Collingwood’s heritage town houses and ever-changing vibrant graffiti.
This single room was presented with all the exhibits positioned around the outer wall with a pile of materials used by the selected designers arranged in the centre. This material pile looked like a hard waste collection at first glace due to its porcelain shards, metallic tubes and industrial plastic off-cuts arranged in a haphazard construction.
After looking around the exhibition the first time it became clear that this collection of waste was a selection of materials that the designers had repurposed and reimagined into one of a kind products and furniture pieces.
One example of this is TeMo (Figure 1),a tensegrity table designed by Mark Richardson out of aluminium tubing with a plate glass top. The materials could have all been bought brand new from the local hardware store but instead Richardson repurposed the handles from old whipper-snippers that he found in hard rubbish collections or at waste transfer centres. These tubes where then held together with simple 3D printed brackets which could be made in house without any outsourcing which adds to the philosophy of sustainable design practices.
Figure 1: TeMo by Mark Richardson
This ingenuity was seen throughout the whole exhibition as these talented, progressive designers had turned materials such as marine plastic debris and spent coffee grounds into door knobs and functional stools.
From the whole exhibition the product that interested me the most was a cutlery set titled Grip (Figure 2). This product caught my eye through its use of organic curves and unusual shapes. Grip was designed by Sarah Ceravolo who is a Melbourne based designer who works mainly with the development of dynamic forms and generative technologies.
Ceravolo designed this cutlery set with the dynamic forms in mind as well as the overarching theme, from Welcome to Wasteland, of sustainability. This cutlery set was made out of HDPE plastic syringes that would have normally been thrown out as hospital waste. Ceravolo states on her Instagram that “Australian hospitals produce 260 million kilograms of solid waste each year”. This waste is currently disposed of after its short usage life, ending up in landfill across the country. Ceravolo’s work shows clearly that this hospital waste could easily be melted down and recycled into a vast variety of useful products, giving this saved landfill a second life.
Grip has an extra level of positive impact as the items have been designed specifically in their interesting forms to help individuals who have difficulty gripping traditional cutlery due to a lack of fine motor skills. This is what has dictated the thicker handle and unconventional geometry. This can be seen particularly well with the knife where the blade is located directly below the handle rather than, conventionally, at the end of a thin lever. The blade location means that the cutting force is not applied directly from the wrist but from further up the users arm, making it easier to apply the required force.
Figure 2: Grip by Sarah Ceravolo
The idea of designing for a specific purpose also resonated with the Welcome to Wasteland exhibition, as it means the product will have a longer life. The Grip, for example, will always serve their stated purpose and will not simply be disposed of after one use like plastic cutlery would, or be replaced once they go out of fashion, as homeware and fast fashion items tend to do.
This exhibition has made me think more about how I work in my own design process. I have started to think twice before buying new materials, seeing if I can possibly use recycled materials, upcycling waste, or whether the product is even worth making, that is, will the product’s positive impact out weigh its negative environmental impact.
This was a great exhibition for any design student to see as it promoted cleaner design practices and stimulated design ideas through the adaption of unusual materials, while clearly showing the direction in which design is heading today.
Written by Maksis Darzins
References
Pieces of Eight, Sarah Ceravolo, viewed 7 April 2019, https://www.piecesofeight.com.au/collections/sarah-ceravolo
Convolo Design, About Concolo Design, viewed 7 April 2019, https://www.convolodesign.com/studio/
Ceravolo, S 2019, Instagram update, 25 March, viewed 7 April 2019, https://www.instagram.com/convolo_design/?hl=en
National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Welcome to Wasteland, viewed 17 March 2019, https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/program/welcome-to-wasteland/
Friends and Associates, Mark Richardson: TeMo, viewed 10 April 2019, http://solar.friendsand.associates/glass-aluminium-plastic-stainless-steel
Friends and Associates, Sarah Ceravolo: Grip, viewed 10 April 2019, http://solar.friendsand.associates/hdpe-polyethelene-stainless-steel
Design Practices 