Sophie Rowley Uses Re-purposed Denim to Design Marble-Like Furniture
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Keeping up with the latest trend of sustainability that has taken over the design world, the New Zealand-born designer Sophie Rowley gives new life to discarded denim offcuts by recycling them into pieces of furniture with marble-like markings. CalledSophie Rowley Uses Re-purposed Denim to Design Marble-Like Furniture
Keeping up with the latest trend of sustainability that has taken over the design world, the New Zealand-born designer Sophie Rowley gives new life to discarded denim offcuts by recycling them into pieces of furniture with marble-like markings. Called “Bahia Denim,” Rowley’s material development project has seen her transform discarded denim textiles into a series of tables featuring mottled patterns that bear a likeness to marble. Rowley, a graduate of Central Saint Martins, collects post-consumer denim offcuts from the production wastes of fashion industries and from households to create the “Bahia Denim.”According to Rowley, who is currently based in Berlin, “Bahia Denim” is characterized by its visual resemblance to marble, which is why it is named after the Brazilian blue marble Azul Bahia.In order to produce these marble-facade denim materials, Rowley layers the textile offcuts she collects on top of each other and bonds them together using resin, before carving them into different elementary shapes, and assembling them in playful ways to make furniture pieces. The non-standardized nature of the process and the waste materials used makes each design unique, varied in size, shape, color, and texture. Lightweight yet durable, the denim material allows for diverse application in furniture, wall paneling, or on interior surfaces. Rowley’s project was born when she started experimenting with different ways of reworking household waste, beginning with more commonplace remnants such as glass, styrofoam, textiles, and plastics. Before working with denim textiles, she researched the construction of sedimentary rocks, which are formed from the broken remains of other rocks that become fused together. She then attempted to replicate this additive nature by building up layers of denim waste, using different shades and sizes of the material to develop varied and vibrant patterns. Rowley initially made slabs of material from the repurposed denim before moving onto the creation of furniture and products. “Once it is made into a material it can be processed in a similar way as wood is,” Rowley explained. “For the rounded shapes that were made for the ‘Bahia Denim’ Slate tables, the material was formed over a mold and could then take on a three-dimensional shape.” Rowley believes that material sources do not necessarily play a part in deciding the value associated with materials but it is more the processes applied to them. Her “Bahia Denim” project reflects this belief. By applying a set of industrial and craft processes to these waste materials, she was able to experiment until the materials took on completely new aesthetics and were almost simulating natural materials. https://www.blouinartinfo.com/ Founder: Louise Blouin Read more