Taste The Waste

The poster and visuals for the event, featuring all the information about the workshop. 

Background: Following a visit by a Chinese design delegation to the WALKING CHAIR Design Studio in Vienna in 2013, the Austrian Federal Chancellery sent us an invitation in early 2019 from Changsha University of Science & Technology in Hunan, China.

After initial contact with the university’s leadership, it became clear that WALKING CHAIR could bring its ideas and concepts to life in a workshop titled “TASTE THE WASTE — New Strategies and Approaches in Design,” and so we accepted the invitation.

The goal: to develop new design ideas created from waste or leftover materials. Each student is to present at least five proposals on a large-format poster, explaining the idea, the concept, and the possible implementation using a set of instructions. In carrying out the assignment, students are to formulate their own ideas, thoughts, and perspectives, design them without using a computer, and present them. At the conclusion, an exhibition featuring the works and the collected waste materials will take place.

Early draft of the event poster featuring all the information and content related to the workshop.

TASTE THE WASTE — Over the course of three weeks, 25 students are developing new ideas on the topics of sustainability, recycling, and reuse.

First step: We collect a wide variety of waste materials—excluding food and medical waste—from construction sites, wood, metal, and textile factories, landfills, and shopping centers. At the time of the 2019 workshop, there was still no mandatory waste sorting in China!

Step 2: The scraps and waste are documented, sorted, and separated according to their material properties. 

Step 3: The design work begins. What can be created from the scraps, and how can the materials be repurposed?

Step 4: The collected posters—featuring a total of 150 ideas from all 25 students—are prepared for the exhibition. The exhibition will showcase the final works alongside the sketchbooks and the waste materials.

TASTE THE WASTE: The One-Day Exhibition. Fidel plays pentatonic music on the piano.

Introduction to the exhibition TASTE THE WASTE

The last weeks we have been working on garbage and the waste of our society. We have been visiting factories and construction sites, we have been on a food market and searched in our own home for waste. Finally we visited garbage companies.

We collected all kind of waste: industrial waste, construction waste, plastics, glass, organic waste, wood, paper, metals, electronic waste and much more. We open the exhibition with this waste collection. With the found material we defined the origin of the material and analyzed its composites for a possible recycling.

In the second part of the exhibition the students show their concepts and ideas how to reuse the found materials. The hand made posters shows – like product instruction manuals – the idea how to re-cycle, up-cycle the waste.

The exhibition of the workshops aims to communicate about our waste and strategies how to find new materials, new products „the new gold“ out of the waste. The exhibition might as well initiate a new thinking how we behave with things, materials and resources.

Recycling will be one of the biggest market in the future. We have to stop the waste. We have to take care of our planet earth.

Fidel Peugeot

A thousand thanks to Xu Hui for assisting with the classes, organizing trips to the various waste sources, and providing translation support during the classes. This red dragon is for you!