Left Sustainability is crucial in the race to save the planet we live in. However, and with recessions looming, there may be a risk that sustainability practices may take a backseat
TFP REPORT 117
Milan Design Week by Matt Davies, director of sustainability
Milan Design Week and its Salone del Mobile have become synonymous with forward- thinking in design. Tis year, for its 60th edition, organisers of the Salone addressed today’s most urgent issue: that of protecting our planet. Furniture designers, manufacturers and specialists now have little choice but to put sustainability at the forefront of their practice and the Salone’s theme, ‘Between Space & Time’, laid emphasis on just how little time we have to save the precious space in which we live.
Te big guns were all in evidence with new products from Tom Dixon, Patricia Urquiola and Lee Broom together with exhibitors that caught TFP’s eye, namely Arper, Moroso and Kvadrat.
Here’s an extract from their interview with director and partner of Really, Wickie Meier Engström on sustainable manufacturing and
the innovations and challenges of production using waste-textiles.
MD: Kvadrat’s collaboration with Really represents exciting advances in sustainable practices in the industry. Could you tell us more about what inspired the collection? WME: Te amount of waste produced across industries, and especially within textiles, sparked the idea of Really. Another reflection was the need for new, quality materials and the growing market for design commodities was also a big factor. Tese three things came together to inspire us.
MD: What challenges did you face when creating the collection and developing the concept of Kvadrat Really?
‘We’ve learnt that constantly buying new stuff makes us happy, but then we don’t have time to just reflect. Everyone, including businesses, would benefit from producing better products that last longer’
WME: One of the issues is the sorting of textiles. You have to know what’s going into a product to know what its aesthetics will be, and textile recycling has not been based on this idea. Clothing has been sorted by category: jackets, shirts, trousers. Te rest has been incinerated, gone into the car industry as insulation, or it has been used as road filling. It’s quite a new game working with waste textiles to engineer a totally different product for the furniture industry. Te other issue is colour. Colours in a waste stream are different day to day, and you can’t curate a fixed recipe. It’s important we avoid the dying process, which is very polluting. We have managed to produce a new colour for this collection which we call cream, and which is similar to a sandstone colour – white is an especially difficult colour to produce from textile waste.
MD: Tose issues around aesthetic qualities of circular materials raise the question of whether sustainable practices are yet seen as on a level with luxury. Do you think we’re on the right path towards that?
WME: Tere needs to be a giant change, and it takes time. Te trouble is that sustainability can compromise the creativity of a brand: it’s not only what we want to do, but it’s what we have to do. Te luxury industry has also been convenience driven, and that need for convenience filters down through the industry. High-end brands are leading the game, but they are also just the tip of the iceberg: everyone else needs to catch up too. Tings are changing, but I’m sometimes surprised about how difficult and slow these processes are – and now we’re looking at a recession, which risks making sustainability less of a priority for businesses.
MD: Kvadrat Really is championing a circular economy. Do you think that’s the most important way the design industry can tackle sustainability?
WME: Yes. Materials are the baseline of this industry, and we are lacking virgin materials especially. Te alternative – an eco agenda – uses up our planet’s natural materials, which is problematic even for business because you need those materials to grow fast due to demand. Te other issue is how much we are refurbishing, producing unnecessary waste which is currently not used efficiently enough. We’ve learnt that constantly buying new stuff makes us happy, but then we don’t have time to just reflect. Everyone, including businesses, would benefit from producing better products that last longer. Becoming more sustainable would not only benefit the planet, but us as people.
MD: Looking forward, are there any new technologies or manufacturing processes that you’re excited about exploring? WME: We want to keep working at what we’re doing to make our processes even better. We need a lot of acoustic regulation in homes and work spaces, so we are looking at different compression methodologies to make something that is sound-absorbent but also compressed and rigid. Another point of exploration is how we can reuse the plastic in waste textile streams. We’re looking at this from a new perspective, exploring what 3D shapes we might be able to make. We are also accounting for our energy usage and impact, because even being circular, you have an impact. We want to be able to see where we are and set out where we want to be in three years’ time. It’s so important for businesses to set their own targets and measurements.
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