Material Explorations : Fantastic Plastic!

Unearthing the materials behind the making

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Thursday, September 21st & Saturday September 23rd 2017

Makerversity launches ‘Material Explorations’ a four part series that unearths the materials behind the making through talks and workshops.

In the second part of this series, Makerversity explores Fantastic Plastic and takes a closer look at how innovations in materials and processes is disrupting what we make and how.

Over the last ten years we have produced more plastics globally than during the whole of the last century. Plastics are one of the most commonly used materials at Makerversity, due to their versatility, affordability and durability. Yet according to Greenpeace 40% of plastics in Europe is used only once before ending up in landfill. In this series we seek out designers and makers who are deconstructing plastics and using them in new innovative ways.

Tom Meades

Workshop description :

This workshop is an introduction into the process of converting household plastic waste, into a valuable material resource. You will get the opportunity to melt down your own plastic and learn the necessary steps to form this material into a product, using modern manufacturing techniques such as CNC-milling. As well as this, you will be taught how to separate your plastics, to make sure you can create the best material as possible.

You will get the chance to design your own forms, where I will offer advice for how to make these from the waste plastic material. I will also teach you how to reprocess the product after you have finished with it, making sure that the material can be reused over and over again.

About Tom Meades:

Tom Meades is a 3D designer, specializing in sustainable material and process exploration. He has a BA degree in 3D Design & Craft from The University of Brighton, as well as professional experience as a product designer. Tom hopes that in the future, people will be able to develop high-quality products within their own home, simply using waste material.

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Happenstance Workshop

Workshop description :

This workshop is an introduction into closed loop plastics manufacturing on a small scale. You will get the opportunity to sort, grind and mould plastic and learn how this can be done a smaller scale to that of an industrial facility. Using DIY machines and a Low Tech approach to industrial moulding you will be guided through a new era of plastic manufacture. You will learn to make a STEW Bowl product from start to finish and be taken through every stage of a circular manufacturing process with plastic.

About Happenstance : 

Happenstance Workshop is a design company based in South-East London with a focus on eco-effective product design and manufacture. A 3-Person team of designer-makers who like to tinker and chat.

 

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TALK : Discovering Plastic

Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century. Plastics are one of the most commonly used materials at Makerversity, due to their versatility, affordability and durability. Yet according to Greenpeace 40% of plastics in Europe is used only once before ending up in landfill. In this series we seek out designers and makers who are deconstructing plastics and using them in new innovative ways.  In the second part of this series, Makerversity explores Fantastic Plastic and takes a closer look at how innovations in materials and processes is disrupting what we make and how.

Maria Arceo

Arceo’s talk will be focused around the origin of her current art installation ‘Future Dust’ – the outcome of a one-year long art project entitled ‘Thames Plastic & the exploration of future dust’, a collaborative art project with the aim to creatively inform and scientifically challenge our understanding of the widespread dispersion of plastic debris entering fluvial and marine water environments.

Maria Arceo is permanently based in London, this Spanish artist uses installation, sculpture, photography, and film, to explore close interactions between human manipulation of the natural world and nature’s response to these interferences. Arceo’s work builds on her deep-rooted fascination for both, archaeology and oceanography. Her passion for water led her to seek human footprints on all kinds of aquatic environments. Beach combing and mud-larking the river for links to past and future has led her to a new found obsession with the long-term impacts of plastic debris entering the city’s most immediate water environments: the Thames.

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Ooho

Rodrigo & Pierre will be talking about his new initiative: Skipping Rocks Lab. A sustainable packaging start-up based in London. The company is pioneering the use of natural materials such as alginate, an extract from brown seaweed, to create materials with low environmental impact. The company’s first product Ooho!, the edible water bottle, has received great media attention and consumer interest.

Rodrigo García González is an inventor, designer, architect and Engineer. He has a Masters of Architecture with Honours from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, as well as postgraduate qualifications from the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University, Imperial College London, the Royal College of Art among others. He has been awarded with the National Dyson Design Award, the British-Spanish Society-Telefonica Award, and won 3 times the GAUDI European Competition on Sustainable Architecture.

Pierre Paslier is an Innovation Design Engineer. After graduating with a MEng from INSA in Lyon, France, Pierre started his career being a Packaging Engineer for L’Oréal.  But uninspired by industrialising new skincare products, he started hacking 3D-printers in his living room at night. Realising he was naturally suited to a more creative and entrepreneurial environment, he studied design at the RCA and in 2013, co-designing one of the first consumer Delta 3D-printers in Taiwan whilst a student. After graduating in 2014 he cofounded two start-ups: Gravity Sketch – a 3D design platform, and Skipping Rocks Lab with Ooho, the water bottle you can eat. He has spoken at several conferences about his projects including 2 TEDx conferences in Athens and Warwick. His work has been exhibited in the Tate Modern in London as well as in Dubai, Taipei and Sydney.

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Andrew Merrit

Andy will talk about his collection of plastic found on the street around the world that he believes will one day be viewed as precious objects. These abstract forms now hold unknown functions and have instead become ornaments. Alongside this and on the back researching Anthropocene for some recent Something & Son projects he will talk about a more recently started collection of plastics found of the beach that are manmade materials but formed by nature.

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