Design as a driver for sustainable change
Design has come to realize that “the Earth is fragile,” as Renzo Piano states. Consequently, designers in particular are called upon to encourage new, more mindful behaviors and to design for a more sustainable world. We launch research projects and build new partnerships to experiment with innovative ideas and materials, aiming to create products and foster lifestyles that are more ethical and respectful of our planet's precious resources.
For us, the circular economy is the ultimate paradigm of sustainability: it is not an abstract philosophy, but a new opportunity for design to create innovative raw materials, optimize processes, and build awareness. Rather than a brand-new theory, it is a time-honored design practice that must be systemized and refined to engage everyone—from households to businesses—in a new zero-waste mindset.
Second life to coffee waste
Coffeefrom is the innovative bio-based material created from recycled coffee grounds and a blend of biopolymers, produced in Italy at every stage. A project created in collaboration with the Milan Polytechnic and companies operating in the bioplastic moulding sector. Coffeefrom is a zero-waste material with infinite expressive possibilities.
Client: Il Giardinone social cooperative
Partners: Politecnico di Milano
Circular Design Course at Iuav University of Venice
Teaching at the Course in Sustainable Products and Circular Design at the Faculty of Design of the IUAV University of Venice..
Client: Iuav University of Venice
Paper waste goes to products
From cellulose fiber come sound-absorbing and decorative panels for contemporary spaces.
Client: Manifatture Macchine Soffici
Partners: Politecnico di Milano
On awareness around food waste
Interactive performance on the art of eating linked to awareness of ingredients, preparation and food consumption.
Client: Zimmerhoff Symposium
Partners: Freitag
For the reuse of industrial molds
Development of a line of contemporary furnishing accessories created by "hacking" and streamlining with a zero-waste strategy historical industrial processes for the production of iron buckets and pots.
Client: Avant-craft by Whomade
Partners: Uberto Gnaro
Against water waste
"Pensaci due volte" (Think Twice) is a creative provocation linked to an awareness campaign on the value of water and against its waste. The project was the winner of the Mini Design Award in 2008.
Client: BMW Italia
Partners: Adi - Associazione per il Disegno Industriale
With food waste
Foodscape is a research project, a shell created with food waste. Conceived to fit back into the logic of natural cycles, once its use is over, it can be dissolved in water and used to fertilize the soil.
Client: Padiglione Italia
Partners: Michela Milani, Lambrate-Ventura District
With scrap iron semi-finished products
Design of a collection of furnishing accessories conceived to utilize and bring new value to industrial processing waste from metal rods. Apparently complex objects, made of small bent and welded parts, embodying the concept of "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".
Client: Avant-craft by Whomade
Partners: Luca Brenna
Circular Design Workshop with Celenit
An intensive workshop centered around the "Second Life" of processes, materials, and products with IUAV Faculty of Design students, to create innovative and sustainable projects with and for the natural insulation company Celenit.
Client: Università Iuav di Venezia
Partners: Celenit, Michele Perissinotto
For the optimization of stone processing waste
An installation-product for the promotion of the Trentino territory and its typical products, such as apples, designed to promote the variety of flavors and formats against the waste caused by market massification, and brought to life using skillfully crafted processing waste from Trentino granites and natural stones.
Client: Fondazione Pistoletto
Partners: Festival dell'Economia di Trento, Cidiemme Cut
For the smart reuse of high-potential urban spaces
A bio-architecture project with a greenhouse on the outskirts of Milan transforms its plant shop to simultaneously become a venue, hosting events centered around manufacturing and urban farmers' markets right alongside flowers and plants.
Client: Serra Lorenzini
With banana tree plantation waste
A yarn is born from the agricultural waste of the banana tree for the creation of sustainable textiles for various industrial applications.
Client: Senai Brasil
Partners: Poli.design, Politecnico di Milano
With leather processing waste
In collaboration with the small Colombian manufacturer Doña Rosa on the outskirts of Bogotá, a collection of bags was born, designed to recover and add value to leather strips from industrial production waste.
Client: Avant-craft by Whomade
Partners: Dona Rosa, Altraqualità
Circular Design Courses at NABA
Design as a tool and protagonist in the shift towards circularity is the subject of the Design IV course for design and interior design students at NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan.
Client: Naba - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano
With scrap iron sheets
A collection of design objects and furnishing accessories in wrought iron, recycled from scrap metal sheets and hand-forged by Indian artisans from the Bastar region.
Client: Avant-craft by Whomade
Partners: Saathi, DCH, Incredible India
For the reuse of ceramic production molds
An eclectic collection of ceramic vases and bowls, designed to reuse—through a creative assembly technique—discarded and obsolete molds from the company's historical archive.
Client: Crestani Ceramiche
For the reuse of obsolete objects
A collection of trays born to enhance, through a provocation, traditional silver cutlery—at once a family treasure/memory and a fetish left unused because it is anachronistic for the new generations.
Client: Avant-craft by Whomade
Partners: Daniele Bonomi
With Amazonian tagua seeds
The nut of a fruit produced by a plant that thrives in the South American rainforest, tagua becomes the protagonist in the Amazonas jewelry line, created in collaboration with a Colombian artisan workshop.
Client: Avant-craft by Whomade
Partners: Piel Acida, Altraqualità
With industrial packaging waste
A cooperation and development project in the slums of Nairobi with "Jua Kali" artisans for the creation of furnishing elements made with new techniques and using local waste materials from stamped industrial metal sheets.
Client: CTM Altromercato
Partners: Undugu Handicrafts