HARVEST MILANO
HARVEST MAP MILANO WAS MADE BY
Elisa Saturno, Césare Peeren, Mel Feldmuller, Raffaella Nigro, Angela Panzeri, Stefano Napoli, Daniel Romano, Delfina Villa Graziani Bandiera,Paola Altamura,Karolina Czyzewska.
Documentation by Denis Guzzo
and with a subsidy from the Dutch stimuleringsfonds:
The harvest team led by Elisa Saturno
spent the last three months of 2017 scanning the Milan industrial area collecting data on available waste and leftover materials.
The 'Harvest Map Milano' resulting from their scouting will be made available online from the end of January 2018. This open source online platform can be used to find circular materials for your projects and for sharing information on available materials.
For now a preview: the best of the harvest chosen
to potentially use for the interior design of the Villa:
Transparant plastic:
Huge stacks of deadstock (new stock that for some reason is no longer fashionable or needed and thus difficult to sell) sheets and two stacks of ready mades...
Lightweight sandwich panels:
There are three sources: triplex with honeycomb core; triplex with foam core; and aluminium with an aluminium honeycomb core.
The first is a continuous flow of material from an exhibition designer which means the amount is unlimited. The last two are limited deadstock stacks, but all three are series of identical sheets. They are light weight and thus easy to work with.
Veneers / Laminates:
There are three sources of veneer waste: two dead stock; and, one company that has laminate cut offs.
These could have potential for cladding the sandwich panels.
Malta:
A resin-like material made from industrial waste.
This one is interesting because it is made from industrial residues like coal grains from filter systems. And, we can obtain the leftover pots from projects, so it would be the waste of the waste!!
Malta is suitable for making continuous waterproof surfaces for floors, walls and baths.
Neoprene first splits:
Rolls of neoprene first split are available in quite large quantities every month, making it a continuous stream of soft waterproof material.
Silk industry waste:
The lake district traditionally has a lot of silk industry, the silk nowadays is imported from China but the fabrics are still designed and woven here for expensive brands like Gucci, Armani and Burberry... One silk factory has 16 old silk thread making machines left over, as well as continuously available silk failed-productions which have small but near invisible faults which make it second quality for the high end fashion industry, but which makes it no less beautiful for insulating curtains, and for use as acoustic material etc.
Small series of ready-mades
From different sources we can get limited series of 'ready-mades' that may be useful.
Other beautiful and potentially useful materials selected from the harvest:
Workshop
In a hands-on workshop that we will organise for April 2018 we will research the potential of these waste materials for the design of seating landscapes, bathrooms, and bed-holiday organisers. If you are a designer with a hands-on attitude and interested to join mail:cesare@superuse-studios.com
MAterialisING potential
The interior design needs a lot of storage space, 6 beds, 2 seating landscapes, 2 bathrooms, a kitchenette and kitchen.
We see six different materialisation concepts for this emerging from the materials found:
Italian veneer
Plastic fantastic
Silk industry
Heated stone mass
Wetsuit landscapes
'Italian veneer'
Italian design is known for its funky veneers, I propose to collect the best veneer waste and arrange them in coherent colour gradients or specific themes for each room.
Combined with the lightweight construction panels they may be good sources for lightweight funky furniture.
'Silk industry'
Industrial green metal frames and metal components from the silk thread machinery could be combined with ready mades and furniture made with the veneers and laminates.
Silk fabric could be used to make curtains or construct rooms within rooms to reduce heating needs in winter, and used for sound absorption and to improve acoustics in the large villa rooms.
Heat floors and walls
Malta is a resin-like material that has been used for flooring, over heated floors, as well as being used to finish swimming pools and bathrooms.
It gives one continuous smooth, waterproof coat and could be used to repair floors or for the flooring on the 2nd Floor, as well as for the floors and walls in the bathrooms, and walls in the laundry and possibly the kitchen areas of the Villa. It is in keeping with the tiled bathrooms in the client's existing house (see below) and the monumental feel they like
... is a bit like the bathrooms Mel and I saw in Morocco
...and like the continuous materialisation style of Joep van Lieshout's polyester bathrooms (see reference pictures below). We imagine to use the Malta to coat the bath, basins and shower to make one continuous, waterproof, easy to clean, durable surface. Also to create the freestanding bath units on the second floor.
Heated stone mass
The freestanding bed/bathing objects could double in function as heat objects for the bedrooms and the same idea can be applied to the lounge rooms. The heated stone concept is based on the idea of warming the people in the space and not the space itself. This is intended mostly for the 2nd floor of the Villa which will be used mainly in the winter.
For this we think to add heating elements such as heated walls and floor in the bathing areas, heated backrests for beds and lounging landscapes. This idea is used in rocket stove heated masses and in heated stone beds used in health salons.
Lounging scapes
For ergonomics I have always been fascinated by the idea that the rules for ergonomic design are based on the average human...but in practice no-one is the size of an 'average' human. To facilitate ergonomic seating for a range of people you may need diversity in sizing. Add to this the idea that social interaction works better if everyone in the space can be in a diversity of positions - next to, opposite, slightly above and below, again diversity...
like in the Eamescape that I designed for visitors of the Vitra design museum, and for the staff and clients of the duchi shoe shop.
For the villa we need to design two lounge areas. One in the summer living space, and one on the winter floor. Both are to contain storage and lighting elements.
Wet-suit lounging landscapes
I am hoping that we might be able to design a neoprene covered seating landscape using the neoprene cutting left overs. A bit like these (albeit ugly) examples of 'movie lounge pits' Mel found on the web, but then shaped more as a whole:
Neoprene is already used as a skin for lounges:
WORK IN PROGRESS..
