With the architecture studio Vacuum Atelier, construction site waste materials are transformed into design objects.
Everything started with the
“HELLO” lamp, as recounted by the architects and designers of Vacuum Atelier.
“We imagine a world without design, where the design of objects is ‘lost,’ and only scraps remain to create new objects. The project inherently carries an ambiguity: not always, but more often, the design seeks elaborated forms and materials, built ‘ad hoc’ for a product, with custom-made components.”
A contrast emerges, a friction between the quality of a research process and materials derived from waste, far removed from the realm of design and as distant from it as possible.
This process finds its concrete application in the “HELLO!” lamp, where the orange water drainage pipe is supported by a tripod made of recycled reinforcement rods. The two elements taken from the world of waste, of low cost and value, are transformed into a design object. The various components are mostly assembled dry, without the need to reintegrate materials into a production process, thus limiting energy dispersion. It is not an object that seeks to conform to all others but rather achieves a more sustainable process. Instead, it aims to turn the problem around, viewing it from another perspective, and placing waste at the centre, as the protagonist. The final object alternates between frequencies related to design and frequencies of waste, presenting itself “honestly” through its recovered components.
Hello is an invention that draws from the past and looks to the future.