“The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first. The quality of our thinking depends on the way we treat each other while we are thinking.”
The secret to a smart office interior design lies in its sustainability. The choices in components used for completion of interiors make all the difference. Using materials that may look pretty but may not be durable or may suffer from overnight disintegration will serve no purpose to an office in the long run. Also, the cost-effectiveness of having a fully fledged sustainable interior raises up the advantage ante of using reusable materials in the office furniture.
For the past two years, Snøhetta has been working on a research project related to plastic. The aim has been to understand plastic as a material, its journey and footprint in the value chain, as well as its inherent qualities. A key ambition is to shift the public’s attitude towards used plastic, from regarding it as waste to seeing it as a valuable resource that should be employed in new ways once it has served its original purpose.
Snøhetta is now happy to present one of the projects that were born out of this research. Together with furniture manufacturer Nordic Comfort Products (NCP), Snøhetta has developed a chair with a body made from 100 % recycled plastic from the local fish farming industry in the North of Norway, and a subframe made from recycled steel.
This stunning chair in deep emerald green, with a swirling marble texture. Although made from plastic, its opulent design sleek lines lean toward a modernist design.
Trash vs Treasure
As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Rather than import plastic from China, which is what the company did previously, NCP found it could harvest viable used plastic from businesses inside just a 12-mile radius.
“One of our goals was to do a project to inspire and show the industry that you can actually make businesses out of what they today consider as trash,” says Rossi. “Through design and architecture, plastic becomes a resource.”
The nets are not only ground down plastic pellets to create new chairs inside injection moulding machines; they have green, yellow, and dark blue hues that combine beautifully. “We use no dye whatsoever,” says Rossi. “I refuse to add any colour. We should use whatever we get from the fishing net.”
Perhaps what’s most compelling about the S-1500 isn’t that it’s a chair built simply from a political or environmental standpoint. It’s just logical, good design to maximize the potential of any material–let alone one that’s so abundant.
But dealing with our global pile of plastic is a larger problem than any one sector or company can handle on its own. “When you use plastic for certain things that are meant to last, it’s a wonderful material,” says Rossi. “When you misuse it in products with a short life-span, it’s a misunderstanding of the material’s capability.”
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