Plastic fantastic: Designer re-imagines glassblowing

Eindhoven – Glassblowing is an age-old art that only a few can master, but Dutch designer Ruben der Kinderen has developed a manual process that creates blown plastic vases from a toaster oven, an air pump and PET tubes.

Der Kinderen’s work focuses on product design that has a social experience twist. This project, entitled Blow, was inspired by the idea that many modern-day home goods are created with homeowners not understanding the production process behind them. In the video above, the designer heats a PET tube and then pumps air into it to create a charming vase.

‘The PET-bottle’s automated production process is re-imagined into a manual one,’ explains the designer. ‘This allows the creation of new and unique products, as well as giving an insight into the production process.’

In the Future Family, people will take product creation into their own hands and live in a Hacked Home, where they hack devices and materials to create new objects. Blow is a conceptual imagining of a future possibility.