The coronavirus outbreak has forced people around the globe to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) on a daily basis. Prioritizing safety, we forget about the environment. The result is the frightening statistics showing that 129 billion face masks have been discarded every month since the start of the pandemic. Estimates suggest that around 75 per cent of these will end up in landfill or ocean, where over the course of around 450 years they will break down into microplastics. To address this issue, designers offer ingenuous ways of recycling used PPE into something meaningful.

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Food is an important part of our life, regardless of culture. From childhood, many of us associate food with warm feelings and good memories. Inspired by a special and personal value food may hold, artists use their talent and creativity to recreate delicacies and groceries in the most unexpected materials, from felt to stone. These fantastic renditions are so amazingly lifelike it is hard to believe they cannot be eaten.

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Reportedly, 92 million tons of textile waste are generated by the fashion industry every year. Wearing vintage and second-hand is great but the next big trend in sustainable fashion is making clothing out of discarded items. Frustrated with the excessive use of the world’s natural resources, and the amount of waste produced worldwide, young fashion designers choose to create unconventional garments out of reclaimed materials, turning waste into something new.

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Rebounding craze of the early 1980s is long gone, but there is still an ongoing debate about the health benefits trampoline can offer. While pro-bouncers cite the NASA research showing that physical output was greater from jumping on a trampoline than running, others claim that rebound exercise is aerobically mild. Whoever is right, the fact is true that although a trampoline looks like a toy, it comprises a gravity-generating device and offers a mood-boosting experience. That is probably why designers readily include this bouncing gear into their projects.

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Is that possible to marry natural and manmade materials? Or make non-recyclable plastics as valuable and appreciated as traditional organic materials, like marble or precious wood? Product designers featured in this post say an emphatic  “yes” to both questions as they pair resin with most exquisite natural materials.

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Macramé is a sort of textile produced using knotting instead of weaving or knitting. Being an ancient technology predating the wheel and use of fire, knots are true artifacts of human ingenuity. One of the earliest recorded uses of macramé style knots as decoration is in the carvings of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians. Today, this technique is revived by millennial and seems to be one of the hottest trends.

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The art of lacemaking is an ancient craft, which originates in the Middle Ages and remains an important part of European heritage and culture. Today, lace sees a celebrated revival, with artists combining traditional crochet techniques with unexpected media, merging 2D and 3D, and – literally – taking lace art to a whole new level.

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Sometimes what we see is not what it really is. Interior designers consciously work toward changing the entire perception of the room with the help of optical illusions. Using visual trickery that appears to differ from reality, they manage to expand space, play with history and architecture, and create alternate worlds.

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Heavy-looking, yet transparent. Colourful, yet reminiscent of ice. Hard, yet so soft. Arousing numerous associations with popsicles, stained glass, and rainbows. With this post, we continue our exploration of amazing resin furniture designs that capture the dazzling material’s versatility.

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Typically, when a building has to be taken down, it is demolished, with most of the materials used in construction ending up as debris. Architects aware of this huge problem, which threatens the sustainable future of architecture, are turning to reversible design – an approach that involves developing buildings that are easy to dismantle. In this way, built structures are more flexible and adaptable to the climate changes and redevelopment plans. In fact, they can be considered as banks of valuable construction materials that can be upcycled and reused. The projects in this post that demonstrate thinking beyond the life of the building and taking the idea of circular construction system to a maximum level.

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