INdustry

Industry is an exercise in creating and applying honest sustainability practices within a small designer/maker studio, with the aim of creating a circular economy model. The result is a series of speculative works, some finished some still concepts, where the entire ecological impact of the object is considered: materials, production, use, storage, transport and disposal, compelling a revision of out-dated manufacturing models where sustainability becomes the true measure of an object’s worth.

Combining contemporary design, the rigours of traditional craft and the intimacy of working by hand with the resourcefulness and inventiveness of the repurposed, this body of work at once minimal, primal and delicate celebrates and softens the qualities of an industrial aesthetic.

Working mainly in timber and rubber from recycled tyre inner tubes and considering the finite nature of this invaluable material resource and the availability as a throwaway item of the latter, these objects were designed to be disassembled for reuse or repurpose and storage and transport. Every timber build is a knock down frame secured in place using dry joinery, rubber rope or pressurised rubber inserts, creating larger objects from smaller parts. This principle is also applied to the lights in the exhibition made from discarded fluorescent tubes that can be disassembled by simply pulling a rubber knot. Even the LED strips are held with knotted rubber anticipating reuse. Similarly, larger works can be dismantled, easily stored or later adapted into smaller outcomes.

The sawdust from these manufacturing processes was salvaged and treated creating a material composite that can be moulded, coloured using natural dyes and later disposed of organically. The tyre inner tubes were collected and then transformed into rope and hand woven into textiles while applying rubber’s elastic properties and its intrinsic friction to cover, protect, and hold the objects.

The idea for Industry originated from a desire to question systemic harmful design and production practices in the industries I work in that feed an unsustainable model for the future of our planet. Industry is the practical outcome of a year’s study into sustainable ancient technologies long discarded in the name of ‘progress’ and which do not require any new infrastructure investments for their application, a considerable advantage for a small designer/maker workshop. These works embody the thoughts and ideas that stemmed from this research.