Jasper Morrison designed chairs made from recycled industrial waste for the company Emeco.
With “Alfi” by Jasper Morrison, the American company Emeco is continuing its development of seating furniture made from recycled industrial waste. The seat shells are made from a mixture of 92.5 percent polypropylene and 7.5 percent wood fibers and the frames are made from sustainably grown ash wood by Amish craftsmen not far from the company’s headquarters in Pennsylvania.
The Chilean architecture collective Grupo Talca created an inexpensive, secluded oasis in the middle of downtown Santiago. The atmospheric installation is reminiscent of naturally occurring elements in central Chile.
The Chilean architecture collective Grupo Talca works at the interface between architecture, sculpture and civic participation. The group often uses whatever they happen to find as building material. The construction costs therefore always remain very low – but do not limit the quality of their work. The “Bosque de Mim-bre” urban space is proof of this.
The project – which translates as “forest of willow barley” – is not intended to be a simulation of a natural island. Rather, it is an atmospheric installation reminiscent of the naturally occurring elements of central Chile: stone, water, willow and sand. The work presents itself as an architectural and therefore deliberately artificial space, created by an enclosure of bundles of willow tied together.
Various clearings open up in the middle of this four-metre-high forest, in which the architects have placed “natural” elements: Water flows through a pipe onto stones placed by Chilean sculptor Vicente Gajardo, wicker benches form the seating areas and there are small mounds of sand here and there. The result is a secluded oasis amidst the high-rise buildings of the Chilean capital Santiago.
You can find out more in Baumeister 2/2016
