About This Live Project

Sheffield Homes is an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) set up and owned by Sheffield City Council to manage council housing in Sheffield. As our client, Sheffield Homes offered us a list of potential project briefs for us to choose from, all of which deal with important issues and concerns regarding the current council housing stock in Sheffield. Our group decided to embark upon developing innovative solutions to address the important issue of waste disposal in flatted council estates. Our hope is that our efforts can offer strong design initiatives on the topic whilst creating awareness and incentive on the importance of recycling and proper disposal of household waste.

Tuesday 7 October 2008

Bin Seats




designer's own words:"...a fresh look at the tired topic of waste". What more appropriate product to target than the icon of waste - the urban garbage bin. Reusing and recycling can be a necessity or a statement, but both are driven by rethinking. A garbage bin has its own unique characteristics: it contains, it has wheels and ribs, it is stackable and thermoplastic. A chair has its own unique characteristics: it contains, it has legs, it reflects tradition and human dimensions, it is structural. We shuffled these characteristics; stretched and deformed the sides of the bin to create a seat, we sawed and bent the ribs to strengthen and emphasize forms. At times we hung on to a word or an image and melted the plastic to realize it; at times we allowed the process to take its own course. The design process reexamined the chair archetype and confronted its traditional image with the relatively inferior one of its former life as a garbage bin. On one hand is a bin - on the other, a chair.

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