Lockdown Artefacts: My Neighbour’s Mementos

Lockdown Artefacts: My Neighbour’s Mementos

Lockdown Artefacts: My Neighbour’s Mementos

REIMAGINE// Lockdown Artefacts: My Neighbour’s Mementos

How can we reimagine the value of materials deemed troublesome or worthless?

What makes a material precious? How could we utilise locally abundant waste materials? What stories could they tell? Lockdown Artefacts: My Neighbour’s Mementos is a critical design project exploring our relationship with waste, using locally abundant discarded HDPE gathered during the lockdown of 2020. Utilising plastic waste collected from a neighbour, this body of work showcases how the materials we discard can provide insights into our behaviours and actions. The result: a collection of precious mementos from an extraordinary time, acquired as a by-product of our most mundane rituals.

Supply chains halted due to restricted movement during lockdown and access to materials and services decreased. This highlighted the importance of capitalising on locally abundant materials such as waste. This work aims to showcase how we can design and create objects, surfaces and materials using ‘found colour’, as well as ‘found material’, designing from what is available rather than seeking to modify materials set out by pre-determined colour ways.

REIMAGINE// Lockdown Artefacts: My Neighbour’s Mementos

How can we reimagine the value of materials deemed troublesome or worthless?

What makes a material precious? How could we utilise locally abundant waste materials? What stories could they tell? Lockdown Artefacts: My Neighbour’s Mementos is a critical design project exploring our relationship with waste, using locally abundant discarded HDPE gathered during the lockdown of 2020. Utilising plastic waste collected from a neighbour, this body of work showcases how the materials we discard can provide insights into our behaviours and actions. The result: a collection of precious mementos from an extraordinary time, acquired as a by-product of our most mundane rituals.

Supply chains halted due to restricted movement during lockdown and access to materials and services decreased. This highlighted the importance of capitalising on locally abundant materials such as waste. This work aims to showcase how we can design and create objects, surfaces and materials using ‘found colour’, as well as ‘found material’, designing from what is available rather than seeking to modify materials set out by pre-determined colour ways.

Objects range from 7cm to 20 cm tall and have all been created from recycled HDPE plastic donated from one neighbour during the lockdown of 2020.

Objects range from 7cm to 20 cm tall and have all been created from recycled HDPE plastic donated from one neighbour during the lockdown of 2020.

https://www.planted-cities.co.uk/green-grads/olivia-howick

https://vimeo.com/639570815

http://www.oliviahowick.com/