R&D Design Together

Our understanding of sustainable and circular principles is always evolving thanks to knowledge sharing within the design community.

During our Material Change show, an exhibition as part of Material Matters at London Design Festival 2023, we invited visitors to pin-up notes of their best references, case studies and source of information.

• Does Material Matter?
• Does using recycled plastic still preserve the need for primary plastics?
• How can a circular product be a catalyst in creating true circular economy? Looking beyond standard circular design principles. And at its place without the broader economy?
• Why are we not using more waste trees killed due to disease?

• Let my people go surfing – by Yvon Chouinard
• Invisible women – by Caroline Criado-Perez
• The sustainable design book – by Rebecca Proctor
• The design of everyday things – by Don Norman
• Welcome to the circular economy – by Claire Potter
• Open Design now – by Bas van Abel
• Made in London – by Carmel King, Clare Dowdy, and Mark Brearley
• How bad are bananas? – by Mike Berners-Lee
• Design for the real world – by Victor Papanek
• Wasted – by Katie Treggiden
• Cradle to cradle – by Michael Braungart and William McDonough
• Futurekind – by Rob Phillips

Concepts:

• Mono-materials
• Biomimicry traditional and ethnic craftsmanship
• Deep-sea mining
• Soil
• The three pillars of sustainability
• Managing change into sustainable practices in corporations – Minna Halme’s research
• Vegetable tanned leather from pasture fed animals
• River Sand mining
• Nanocellulose-based structural colour – Noora Yau’s research 
• 3D Printed Sand – Sandhelden

Websites

• Minimise
• Plastic Free (material innovations & systems change)
• The Zeitgeist Movement
• Mori London
• Materiom (library of biomaterials)
• Human Material Loop (textile innovation)
• 3D Wasp
• Batch.Works (for materials/manufacturing, consulting)
• Sea Shepherd (sustainable practices)
• Datecrete
• Resonate Interior Architecture
• Superlocal, Super Circular Estate (sustainable urban development)
• Circle House – Housing Evolutions hub
• Helen Kirkum (new sneakers made from old ones)
• KlimaDAO
• Yodomo
• The VEJA Project
• Clorifix (fermentation, processes for colour)
• The Sustainability Collective

Products

• The Egg Chair
• R.U.M Chair by Wehlers

Materials

• Pinatex Textiles
• Material ConneXion
• Biological, sustainable materials – Dr Naomi Nakayama – Imperial College London
• Parali by Aarushi

• Tony Chocolonely – sustainable business model
• Patagonia – sustainable practices and business model
• Doughnut Economics Action Lab – business model

• We should be empathetic to Earth
• Cancelled plans, fashion from waste
• Broken nature: design takes on human survival
• Share
• Learn from the rest
• Reform begins with us
• Recycle, reuse everything
• Use sustainable materials
• Build with what you’ve got
• Forget what they were before
• Remember the rules don’t apply
• If we take from nature, we need to give back to the nature
• Sustainability is the future of our planed, take care of it!
• Stop deep-sea mining – more recycling – less raw materials that cost the ocean
• Sustainable development is the design for now without imposing on the needs of the future
• Spread knowledge! Centralized production and knowledge is harmful. The future has arrived but it’s not spread evenly