“The problems our planet is facing today cannot be solved by one actor alone,” asserts clothing brand RE;CODE. For this reason, the Korean company, founded by textile and chemical company Kolon in 2012 with the aim of creating a sustainable fashion brand, will promote a sustainable initiative at FuoriSalone, in collaboration with DEKASEGI.
Just like RE;CODE paints a better world through its clothes, to reach more people and solicit action RE;CODE & DEKASEGI have selected ten groups of Asian designers who pursue sustainability in their respective fields. Together, they are the protagonists of the “Re;collective” exhibition dedicated to the “Upcycle” theme, dreaming of a sustainable future under the slogan of “creating significant changes together”.
From fashion to industrial design, moving on to furniture design, ranging from seats, street furniture, lighting, to clothes that speak of haute-couture details and tailoring: the theme of reusing industrial waste is tackled with creativity and imagination through the projects on display.
The exhibition is on view April 15-23, in the evocative setting of Dropcity, the new center for architecture and design in via Sammartini in Milan, inside the Magazzini Raccordati of Milan Central Station. Take a closer look at the featured works below:
Stacking Cushion, Selvedge Jacket | RE;CODE
Re;Code collects classic blazers that are no longer in use, either because they remain unsold, are in stock, or have become unwearable. They approach these blazers with the intent to disassemble and recombine their pieces, breathing new life into items that have already fulfilled their original function. Both Stacking Cushion and Selvedge Jacket are a result of this creative process.
Magazine Bowl | Jo Nagasaka & Naritake Fukumoto
By scraping off the pages of a magazine, it is transformed from an object for reading into a bowl for storing things. The cross-section of each page appears, so that the cover and pages, which existed on different surfaces when it was a magazine, create the surface of the same bowl. The depth of the bowl changes as the pages are turned, and the pages on the opposite side has a series of stories cut out in round slices.
Fluffy Tree Stump | Eunha Kim
Fluffy Tree Stump is a stool and object made with clothes, labels, buttons, and zippers sewn together. The mushroom-shaped object constitutes an element in itself that can be separated from the main work.
Hand Lighthouse | Hyesun Lee
Made with the waste abandoned in the sea, these lanterns describe the virtuous circle through which waste takes on a new important and essential function, such as that performed by the lighthouse for ships sailing in the night sea.
Airbag Armchair | Jinyoung Yeon
This armchair has been created by repeatedly disassembling and reassembling airbags that were originally used in cars. The unitized tube-type airbag has been aesthetically transformed through various processes, including repeated destruction. Additionally, the chair has been made using defective airbags from the mass production process, and this highlights the importance of sustainability through new interpretation and usage.
Kerf Plastic Chairs | Kuo Duo
Finding recycled plastic board highly similar to plywood in terms of materiality, Kuo Duo applied a woodworking technique, ‘Kerf Bending’, which is used to bend wood, to the recycled plastic. Hard and thick plastic boards become soft and bent without the use of heat, glue, or any chemical process. This new possibility of processing the material is what they aimed to showcase at this exhibit.
Nylon Stool | Kwang-ho Lee
An extension of Lee Kwang-ho’s signature work, the Knot Series, this three-dimensional body was created by recycling mountain climbing ropes specially produced in Kolon industries for this exhibition.
Chopping | Multistandard
Chopping reveals the distortion and undulation of individual trees by chopping wood. Wooden furniture is usually processed into horizontal and vertical planes as planned ‘timber’, but by processing the wood using primitive wood-chopping methods, the living form of the tree inside is exposed. By literally standing them back-to-back, they are created as objects that can be used as stools or side tables.
New Territories – Diamond | Nuri Yeon
Nuri’s approach involves creating new combinations of sub-quality products, such as vintage speakers with rough appearances and defective airbag binding patches. He repurposes these materials by combining them with others to make pedestals and sound-absorbing materials for the speakers. He achieves this without additional processing.
Cewo | PINWU Design Studio
Ceramic and porcelain leftovers from Jingdezhen, the Chinese capital of Porcelain with countless workshops and factories, become the protagonists of the work of PINWU Design Studio. For the Re;collective exhibition they present a seat made of ceramic and wood leftovers, 2 materials which are very hard to recycle traditionally, combined through stitching them together.
Bye-Cycle to Upcycle | Roarcrenew Architects
A public-minded work that responds to the exhibition theme of Upcycle-recycling for reuse, this bike is disassembled into two parts, the wheel works as the moving component while the frame beam becomes the main structure: remodeling a detail brings new functions for these two parts.
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