Best Use of Material: Wallpaper* Design Awards 2021

In a quest to manufacture better, designers, established brands and start-ups alike have channelled their efforts into material research, pushing toward a more sustainable and circular way of producing furniture. These are our favourite examples.

&New

In its most responsible form, plastic is recycled and recyclable and can be moulded into stackable modular shapes. &New’s ‘Jää’ bench, designed by Jo Wilton and Mirka Gröhn, is made from 100% recycled post-consumer landfill waste.

Magis

Konstantin Grcic’s monobloc chair for Magis is created out of a patented polypropylene recycled from waste produced by the automotive industry and from the company's own factory, and  its design is ideal for stacking. 

Plasticiet

Dutch studio Plasticiet’s bold claim, ‘plastic is the new gold’, is backed up with a collection of building blocks resembling natural stone or mother-of-pearl, made from plastic waste.

Studio ThusThat

Moving beyond plastic recycling, designers are exploring other alternative ways to fabricate. Studio ThusThat (a collective exploring industrial waste) has been experimenting, among other things, with overlooked copper byproducts, in particular with the impurities that get expelled during the material’s purification process. It created a strong, black geopolymer from slag with a carbon footprint that’s about 77 per cent lower than cement, and can be used to create furniture and objects.

Studio Ryte

Hong Kong-based Studio Ryte’s experimental flax stool uses a material that behaves like carbon fibre while being fully biodegradable. Light and stackable, it was created with modern nomads in mind. They say, ‘Faced with climate change and globalisation in the current era, the world needs new solutions to transform our current way of using resources and using products.’

More from Wallpaper* Design Awards 2021

Supernovas

Taking plastic recycling one step further is Supernovas, whose recycled plastic objects and furniture (the latest created in collaboration with Odd Matter) are available on a ‘stream’ model, and can be returned at the end of its life, or swapped for alternatives.