Precious resources

Milan – Exhibition Next Habitat explored the untapped potential of everyday materials.

Projects addressed our relationship with energy, life and the environment
They tackled issues like sell-by-dates, inheritance, waste allocation and the meaning of 'precious'

In the future, materials that exist as a surplus today might be rare. Exploring the temporality of materials as well as the inherent inefficiencies in our consumer culture, designers from the Master of Interior Architecture & Retail Design programme at the Piet Zwart Institute created a series of projects repurposing common materials and abundant energies into precious artefacts.

Two of our favourites were Current Alchemy, a project which turned piezo electricity into crystals, and Radio Killed The Electric Star, a wireless lamp that harnessed the electromagnetic fields around us. ‘We wanted to explore the concept of electricity as a handmade product,’ Current Alchemy’s creators Julia Schostak and Pawel Szubert told LS:N Global. ‘And in doing so we created a new precious material.’

The Big Picture: It's time to embrace the anthropocene. Our Whole-system Thinking macrotrend explores how technology is affording new possibilities from abundant materials. Brands need to think on a planetary scale if they want to remain relevant.