London Design Biennale’s Online Gallery Showcases Sustainable DesignLondon Design Biennale’s Online Gallery Showcases Sustainable Design
February 10, 2021

As a lead-up to the 2021 London Design Biennale, scheduled to take place in June, organizers issued a global call that invited “radical design thinking from the world’s design community, the public and young people—seeking to harness the creativity that comes from crisis.”
Submissions were received from more than 50 countries, and are highlighted in an online gallery called “Design in an Age of Crisis: Radical Design Thinking.” In many cases, the projects showcase how artists can “takes one production line’s trash and turns it into treasure.”
Examples of such projects include:
OSTRA, by UK-based Jade Echard: For her project, Echard collects discarded oyster shells and creates a powder from them, which she uses in creating minimalist tableware similar in look to ceramics. She “aims to rethink oyster shells as a valuable, sustainable and local resource of biomaterial.” The project also creates “a network of people (farmers, restauranteurs as material suppliers, scientists, designers, and so on) around waste oyster shells.”
Kajkāo by Lakò, an Italian-Ecuadorian material research and design studio: This projects takes cocoa-pod waste (leftover from the chocolate-making process) and makes biodegradable, compostable materials including plant-based leather, bioplastic, chipboard, and insulation. “As of now, this is an ambitious proposition for a more sustainable future, but they’re actively looking for investors to help make it a reality.”
Accessories from a kombucha byproduct, by UK-based Riina Õun: For her project, Õun collects leftover Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY), which she turns into a paste and uses to create purses and other accessories. She seeks to explore how waste from the kombucha drink industry “can be re-processed into a new, more sustainable, vegan, leather-like material.”
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