Current business models all have one thing in common: the use of finite materials. As this system cannot work in the long term, in this seminar we looked together with our partner das_habitat at other, sustainable forms of business. We set ourselves the challenge of how we could help and connect existing players in the circular economy in order to establish other economic models in Augsburg.
The result is the concept of a workshop in which new furniture is built from unusable or broken furniture. The aim is to minimise waste and ensure that the new piece of furniture can be easily separated into its individual parts. Therefore, a plug-in system is used, which is stabilised using connections with pieces of fabric. In our prototype example of a possible realisation, ties are used to symbolise fabrics that are still usable but largely unwanted by the society and carelessly thrown away.
Different target groups were visualised for the workshop concept. For example, the workshop could be offered as a team-building activity for companies, in which the team then makes pieces of furniture for their own office according to individual ideas. The wood and fabric scraps used are sorted out by social department stores or bulky waste if they no longer have a use there.
Since our project partner is a open workshop, that enables people to upcycle and recycle existing material into new objects, we were looking for certain kinds of commonly used materials to work with.
Turns out fabrics and wood are two widely used materials, that are easy to work with and yet not upcycled very often.
1 Interviews and Research
- Brainstorming: How can circular economy be promoted in Augsburg? What is most frequently thrown away in Augsburg?
-Interview with the social department store Contact and Bulky rubbish Augsburg
=> focus on wood and fabric as raw material
2 Prototyping
- Definition of the goal: Keep raw materials wood and fabric in the cycle for longer through upcycling
- Definition of the target groups - Prototyping different ideas
-Trying out wood, fabric constructions with cardboard
3 Concept
- Creation of a concept with different levels of realisation
- Elaboration of an exemplary workshop - Summary of the results ina concept paper
Additionally to the concept of upcycling we developed a workshop that combines introducing the problematic with a hands on solution: DIY crafting your own furniture!
We outlined the workshop for our project partner das_habitat to implement.
This project was part of my studies in Transformation Design M.A.
Team members: 3
Time span: 4 months
Project partner:
Supervised by:
Prof. Dr. Helge Oder
