Post—Plastic Series

Post—Plastic Series

Post—Plastic Series

The future of plastics represents one of the most, if not the most, challenging and relevant design opportunities to be developed and thoroughly explored in the years to come. The Circular Economy model still considers Designing for Long Life Use of Products a sustainable practice, although applying this method to plastic products is not sufficient for a radical change, as those items will still need to be recycled by our own future society. Postponing the end of the cycle means that in the future there will still be enormous quantities of plastics to be taken care of.

What will plastics look like, what sort of products will be produced with them and, most importantly, how will future human societies develop sustainable circular solutions to repurpose them?
In fact, considering the most recent politics and cultural behaviours, the soaring question would be whether or not plastics will even continue to be newly produced in the future. The year 2021 marks a milestone in the history of plastics, as the EU will permanently ban single-use plastics, such as straws, cutlery, plates and containers. This will generate an enormous cultural as well as manufactural shift that will see an entire industry change their products, productions and materials.

If we are moving towards a world where plastics will not be produced anymore, is there even ever going to be a Post–Plastic World? In the moment humans will end polymers production, a new Post–Plastic World will begin, but it will not be plastic free. Scraps, cut-offs and all the items already out there in the environment and their usage will be the biggest design challenge.

Considering the recent successful sustainable cycle of re-using and re-selling of the vintage industry, the aesthetic of many young households has developed into a scenario that resembles more, rather than a contemporary present, a nostalgic past where products were durable and well crafted. At the same time, the design industry is widely saturated with products that resemble a now more than ever outdated consumeristic economy rather than a sustainable future. Moreover, the users are not encouraged to take care of their items neither to engage in a long term relationship with them.
The use-object has been transformed into a kind of phantasm whose existence is a psychological projection of our quest for meaning, estranged from its social and embodied reality. So as a consequence, devices start feeling inhuman and cold rather than exciting and other- worldly as our parents and grandparents, who we now envy for their more authentic products we search for in vintage shops, were thought to believe.

As Dieter Rams observed in his essay Omit the Unimportant (1989): “Our culture is our home. It would be a great help if we could feel more at home in this everyday culture, if alienation, confusion and sensory overload would lessen”.

According to many young designers, the future is sustainable and innovative but, in fact, there is a wide discrepancy between this design philosophy and the current production and manufacturing. Furnitures, homewares and devices are still mass produced with rhythms that the recycling and repurposing industry cannot keep up with, resulting in a vicious cycle that aims towards consumerism and broad earnings with just a dash of greenwashing here and there.

It is extremely interesting that the kind of aesthetic language and lifestyle younger generations are moving towards to are sometimes actually closer to what we can define as the one of a Pre–Plastic World, while also using products of a plastic, consumeristic and material world. Additionally, we can see a parallelism between the aesthetic language of the 1960s, when the plastic world had its first worldwide start, and the current and perhaps future aesthetic, because of the future design opportunities, linked to new manufacturing processes.
The Post–Plastic World’s new challenges will generate a new age of experimentation, similar to the Radical Design where designers first started to experiment with plastics.

As Achille Castiglioni once said, “The function, what a nice form!”, which reminds us that by shaping the aesthetics of products based on technologies and materials it is possible to understand future functions, behaviours and sustainable production cycles.

Overall, the Pre–Plastic World will be the basis for the Post–Plastic World, generating a strong, long-term and emotional relationship with the items, so the nostalgia of what used to be, in terms of authenticity, will become a fresh desire of a new sustainable future.

The Post—Plastic Series is a collection of work which frames the household environment of the Post-Plastic World. The disrupted naked furniture aims to generate an emotional attachment with the user by being honest in their artificiality. Being displayed as an House Archive of plastics, the metal frames shows the scrap plastics held inside, in an effort to save them from the environment. The user will then build a long-term relationship with the items, to self-generate sustainable behaviours.

The industrial waste becomes part of ourselves and plays a key role in understanding and reflecting our society, leading to the eventual establishment of a new aesthetic language.
The furniture deliberately packs more waste material inside the frames, benefiting both the functionality of the objects and the planet, consequently opposing the traditional manufacturing processes of the Plastic Industry.

While providing the audience with a provocative vision of the future of plastics, the project also explores how future scenarios could feel less alienating if pictured as emotional and poetic. The Series aims to portray, in terms of aesthetics, functions and manufacturing processes, a possible solution to future design challenges the Industry will face in the event of the end of plastic production.

356̇917 Cocktail Sofa powerfully expresses the honesty of its artificiality and its manufacturing processes. It appears naked, as the frame holds cut offs of polyurethane, often used in furniture fabrication.
After manufacturing processes, foam scraps and cut-offs, being thermosetting polymers, are some of the hardest materials to recycle or repurpose. Although in recent years they have been recycled through grinding, they are still responsible for the presence of microplastics being found in the environment. They are often repurposed to serve the same functions, prolonging the cycle of cut offs disposal.

In current times, plastic has become the prime material at pretending to be what it is not and many practitioners and manufactures hide its true peculiarities in order for the users not to experience it first hand. This is due to the common belief that polymers are, in fact, cheap materials, not an experimental luxury. Mass produced pieces as well as 3D printed objects are considered inferior because of their prominent and visible artificiality. The post-production finishing treatments, in their effort to hide materials and production imperfections, may generate dishonesty and therefore a lack of empathy and authenticity, which turns items into distant and aloof pieces, easily discarded.
Consequently, by being honest in their artificiality, new objects and elements of our surroundings could become more humanly and close to us. Embracing their Anthropocene origins, being honest in what they are, what materials they are made out of and by revealing the story of their production, those artefacts may also generate an emotional impact, so affection.
The artefacts, because artificial, become more human. Moreover, by candidly revealing and utilising the repurposed materials exactly as they are, they will all be different and unique pieces, opposing the perfection and alienation of mass production. The elevated objects, every time different from each other, will be comparable to those coming from craftsmanship and custom productions.

Overall, the Honesty of Artificiality makes the objects authentic and unique and by doing so it revives what Walter Benjamin defined the aura of the artefacts, elevating their meaning and value.

74̇165 Lounge Chair is a different version of the cocktail sofa. The smaller seat's frame holds air filled pillows and bubble wraps often used in delivery services and parcels. It is inspired by the largely popular inflatable chairs of the Italian Radical Designers of the 1960s. Throughout the chair's lifetime, air filled pillows are going to deflate and bubble wraps are going to brake, causing a loss of volume and reducing the seat's functionality. This will cause the need to fill the frame with newly repurposed and rescued materials throughout the piece’s lifetime. This will let the user save more and more materials while using the chair.

1̇932 Side Table is slightly different in its circular shape from the other pieces of the collection and addresses a specific enquiry related to the emotional durability of the project and the way users can fell attached to their items and be moved towards sustainability and long-term use. A PVC flat sheet slides through the frame and needs to reach the top, supported from the scrap plastics, for the table to be optimally used. In this case, the frame is almost completely filled up with upholstery shredded polystyrene. The gaps can be filled by the users with their own materials. The user’s own contribute to the furniture is metaphorically and physically placed at the same level as the industrial plastic waste, generating a sense of belonging and emotional attachment. The plastics are no longer distant, but they are displayed as authentic and generating affection.

According to the Physiology of Perception, the human ego has the power to expand to the items we own, as we perceive them as part of both our physical and psychological self. As Karen Lollar wrote, “My house is not “just a thing”. The house is not merely a possession or a structure of unfeeling walls. It is in fact an extension of my physical body and my sense of self that reflects who I was, am, and want to be.” So perhaps, by reflecting our society, our waste and who we used to be, our future artefacts will reflect our culture and generate that emotional attachment because we will be able to see our egos in them.

The Emotional Durability of the design objects generates self-driven sustainable behaviours. The users and owners of the furniture of the Post—Plastic Series, through the aesthetic experience and use of the objects, will be driven towards a deeper understanding of sustainability. Plastic waste becomes, just like our memories and memory boxes, part of our household environment. It is elevated and deeply valued as a sort of treasure that could never be abandoned again in the natural environment.

36̇990 Separè is a room divider framing the aim of the entire collection to oppose traditional mass production practices. Projects designed to be globally produced in large scales often rely on the use of less material as possible, in an effort to limit the after life recycling. Since plastics need to be rescued from the environment, to stop the spread of micro-plastics, the more material is archived inside the frames, the bigger the positive global impact.
The metal meshes are joined together with metal hinges, making the piece suitable for expansion with multiple units. The rubber, vinyls, PVC and foam cut offs are once again filling the frames, creating spaces in the household environment, according to the room's needs.

63.34 Floor Lamp balances the collection creating a sense of warmth, reminiscent of a welcoming household environment. Cellophane sheets are wrapped around the metal frame. Being semi-transparent, their colours overlay on top of each other, creating different patterns and transforming the light. To achieve a soft light, adequate to the environment the collection is proposing, the frame is wrapped with numerous sheets.

Consequently to the fruition of the Post—Plastic Series and its household environment the pieces of the collection shape, the users and owners will get in touch with a newly established aesthetic language.
Although the environment provides the audience with a substantial and strong aesthetic experience, it is deeply bound and always designed according to its function and meaning. Furthermore, while providing a provocative vision of the future of plastics, the final environment portrays the challenging destiny of the Plastic Industry. While the very end of polymer production is still not extremely close in sight, it still represents the only possible way for the human society to start reaching a global sustainability. Which will eventually lead the industry and its companies to the radical change of their materials, productions, fabrications as well as every step of their products’ life-cycle management. The Series aims to portray, in terms of aesthetics, functions and manufacturing processes, a possible solution to those future design challenges, which will feel comforting, emotional and honest.

All the pieces of the collection have a metal frame component made in aluminium which holds or is filled with different types of rescues polymers.

356̇917 Cocktail Sofa, Height 470mm x Length 1500mm x Depth 500mm. Its metal frame contains polyurethane, polystyrene and upholstery foam cut offs.

74̇165 Lounge Chair, Height 470mm x Length 470mm x Depth 330mm. Its metal frame contains PVC bubble wrap and air pillow from the delivery industry.

63.34 Floor Lamp, Height 1700mm x Diameter 190mm. Its metal frame is wrapped with multiple cellophane films.

1̇932 Side Table, Height 620mm x Diameter 300mm. Its metal frame contains various polymers such as shredded and recycled polyurethane, PVC and acrylic.

36̇990 Separè, per unit Height 1900mm x Length 685mm x Depth 15mm. Its metal frames holds and contains vinyl, polypropylene, PVC cut offs from the fashion industry

https://alessandracrema.com/postplastic-series

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsp383K12B0

https://alessandracrema.com

The Post—Plastic Series challenges the future of the Plastic Industry, its manufacturers, enterprises and consumers. Through its strong critique of mass production and its consumeristic and excessive quantities of waste and over production, the collection portrays the future of plastics as exciting and challenges for manufacturers and designers as the promoters of a circular future lifestyle that will promote radical changes in the way we interact with our environment. The work is deliberately positioned in neither a utopia or dystopia, but more as a realistic scenario which will thought provoke the audience into rethinking circularity and sustainability.