Sustainability

10 Stunning Materials You Won’t Believe Are Made From Waste

Argot Studio showcases groundbreaking sustainable materials from fish scales to mushrooms

While many of us have been baking bread and bingeing Netflix shows during quarantine, Eimear Ryan, founder of Argot Studio, has been using the time to research groundbreaking sustainable materials for her designs.

Eimear, an Irish-born interior and furniture designer, founded Argot in 2018. Now Paris-based, she collaborates with artisans and makers around the world. “Since the beginning, we’ve had a focus on sustainability, whether that be the choice of wood we use or the 3D printing material,” she says. Argot Studio is best known for its sculptural vases—popular on Instagram with a set of internationally informed creatives—which are made on 3D printers using biodegradable biomass derived from corn. “However,” she says, “I do feel that confinement has given us the push to really develop the 10 Chair Project.”

A rendering of Argot's 10 Chair Project.

The 10 Chair Project, which is currently in the research phase, is Eimear’s way of experimenting with new sustainable materials. Her modern chair designs, which are digitally rendered, serve as vessels through which to showcase the unique materials—highlighting their functionality, adaptability, and overall beauty. With the project, her hope is to “bring awareness to the vast array of sustainable materials out there.”

Eimear has been sharing updates and visuals from the project on Argot’s Instagram feed. And through social media, she has been able to connect with even more material developers looking to collaborate. “Thanks to Instagram, the research continues to find us,” she shares. “After posting the first few chair designs, people got in touch, introducing us to materials we hadn’t previously found through our initial search.”

With many active client projects postponed due to the pandemic, Eimear was afforded the unexpected luxury of time to devote to sustainability research. “It’s been a time to reflect on what we’re doing as a company,” she says. “The only future I see for design is a sustainable one. This lockdown has given us the freedom to explore how we can do that in new and creative ways.”

Learn more about the current list of materials for the 10 Chair Project below.

Ceramic Waste

Bentudesign takes waste from ceramics production and creates beautiful, artistic aggregate materials, keeping chunks of the previous ceramics intact to form patterns.

Tasman Glass

Inspired by the landscape of her childhood, Sophie Rowley developed Tasman Glass from the waste of molten glass. The sustainable material simulates water and ice, an ode to the rich textures of New Zealand’s Tasman Glacier.

Mycelium Wood

Mycelium is the vegetative part of fungi (that produces mushrooms); it branches out into rootlike webs that easily bind to other materials. Ty Syml Studio mixes these fungi with waste, like wood chippings, to produce a new material that is both strong and lightweight.

Rammed Earth

An ancient building method that has recently been revived as a sustainable tool, Rammed Earth is made by compacting a damp mixture of soil (with suitable proportions of sand, gravel, clay, and stabilizer) into an externally supported frame or mold.

Fish Scales

SCALITE is a surface material made entirely from fish scales, a by-product of the fishing industry. It’s produced in rigid sheets, made up of vibrant colors with varied patterns. The aggregate dissolves swiftly for enduring marine safety and doesn’t require conventional glue for bonding, eliminating all toxic waste from its production process.

Transformed Rattan

The structure of rattan palms is tubelike; Karuun injects the capillaries with a natural bulking agent that transforms the non-timber material—with little natural value or use—into a firm and versatile plastic alternative.

NewspaperWood

NewspaperWood by Mieke Meijer reverses the traditional wood production process by transforming recycled paper into wood. Made up of layers of paper that appear like lines of a wood grain or the rings of a tree, NewspaperWood resembles the aesthetic of real wood. The material can be cut, milled, sanded, and treated like typical forms of wood.

Sunflower Crop

Sunflower farming (commonly grown to produce oil and biofuel) creates tons of agricultural waste. Studio Thomas Vailley utilizes this waste by heating and pressing the bark fibers into hardboard and combining the marrow with a water-based glue derived from sunflower seeds. The result is a light and foamy composite material with thermal insulation properties.

ECOboard

ECOBoard is an environmentally friendly plywood alternative that does not contain or release formaldehyde toxins. ECOBoards are made using excess agricultural residue from harvests, a by-product that would otherwise be burned.

This Is Copper

Slag is the leftover impurities from the copper smelting process, usually left for waste. This Is Copper by Studio ThusThat utilizes the slag, which has already gone through the high-temperature smelting process, as a reactive binder. The result is a sparkly black concrete-like material that utilizes about 77% less CO2 than standard cement.