About
Marta Figueiredo is a Portuguese architect, artist and designer based in Melbourne. In 2016, she founded her design practice that unites sophisticated craft with playfulness, fun and sensory experimentation.
With her works she wants to gently challenge ideas about standardisation, sustainability, and prompt discussions about new ways design can speak to a broader sensory experience.
"Extensively used in screens and furniture, resin is trending with candy furniture popping up in our instagram feed. Resin is plastic and degrades very slowly hence contaminates our entire ecosystem. During the Covid-19 pandemic, acrylic screens were installed in shops and offices to protect workers, making resin as indispensable as ever. Resin is a cheap and formable thermoplastic but is difficult to recycle. While offcuts can be heat-pressed together to form new sheets, the waste from cutting requires a pyrolysis process, which presents the challenge in the management of this waste. Efficient pyrolysis techniques are key to achieving circular economy."
— Marta Figueiredo 2020
Waste material
I’m re-utilising resin powder waste carefully collected from cutting resin sheets for a project.
After researching and testing this material, I realised that it was impossible to transform it domestically. The solution was then to incorporate this material with a bio-resin to form a new table lamp. This way the components can be recycled in the future using pyrolysis.