Hyundai and Vitra Design Museum discover plastic’s previous, current and future in new exhibition

In partnership with Hyundai

As soon as touted as a novel materials providing unprecedented malleability and flexibility, plastic is steadily turning into one of many largest threats to our pure surroundings. However it may be laborious to not marvel at it when strolling round a brand new exhibition presently on at Hyundai Motorstudio Busan in Korea’s second largest metropolis. ‘Plastic: Remaking Our World’ seems to be on the previous, current and way forward for this sensible however problematic materials, and explores how the Korean automotive producer is addressing the problems surrounding its manufacturing and use.

Co-organised and developed by the Vitra Design Museum in Germany in collaboration with the V&A London and Dundee and Lisbon’s Museum of Artwork, Structure and Know-how (MAAT), the exhibition opens with an immersive, large-scale movie set up by Asif Khan (who was additionally accountable for the exhibition’s design). Entitled Kalpa, it chronicles how, over a interval of 4 billion years, microscopic life turns into oil, which is then used to provide all types of plastics, threatening the very pure surroundings that gave beginning to this materials. The message is obvious. The present plastic disaster is a human-made one, and it’s as much as us people to make it proper.

The world’s third largest automotive producer, Hyundai isn’t shy to confess that it’s a part of the issue. ‘We predict the fascinating factor about having these exhibitions is that the Vitra Design Museum actually highlights and explains these points,’ says Sungwon Jee, senior vp and international chief advertising officer at Hyundai Motor Firm. ‘Now it’s time for international firms to deal with them. We really feel a accountability throughout the automotive trade to be a part of the answer.’

Hyundai operates a complete of seven studios globally – 4 in Korea and three exterior the nation. ‘Every studio has a special focus relying on its location,’ says Jee. ‘Our Busan studio is situated throughout the metropolis’s F1963 cultural advanced, so our prime focus is on tradition and design.’ Opened in 2021, and designed by Seoul-based studio 101 Architects, the predominantly glass-and-steel construction – which homes a big exhibition house, a small store promoting Hyundai merchandise, and a restaurant – has served as a hub for the corporate’s many cultural actions. ‘Plastic: Remaking Our World’ is the third exhibition presentation it has co-organised in collaboration with the Vitra Design Museum, following on from ‘Good day Robotic’ in 2021 and ‘Residence Tales’ in 2023.

The majority of the present takes guests on a journey from the primary makes use of of pure plastics, equivalent to horn and ivory, by the varied semi- and fully-synthetic plastic variations. There are early design classics in Bakelite, like Isamu Noguchi’s Nineteen Thirties ‘Hawkeye Measured Time’ clock or André Mounique’s 1945 foldable ‘Lucidus Bloc’ desk lamp. There may be additionally a mannequin of Monsanto’s ‘Home of the Future’, a 1957 Disneyland attraction during which not solely the home itself, however every part in it, was manufactured from plastic, and a hanging 1916 Charles Rennie Waterproof coat ebonised wooden smoker’s cupboard, which options vivid yellow casein plastic as a floor inlay as an alternative of a extra conventional materials equivalent to mother-of-pearl.

Trying to the longer term, the exhibition options a big part devoted to the event of recent supplies, together with ones manufactured from waste from the seafood trade, nut shells and low grounds. There may be additionally clothes produced from mycelium and edible packaging produced from seaweed. Bioplastics, in the meantime, have been receiving a whole lot of international consideration, however lots of the proposed options are nonetheless at very early phases. ‘Speaking to many specialists within the discipline and trade, it’s clear there may be not one single resolution,’ says present curator Mea Hoffmann.