Potato Head, Bali’s seaside membership and lodge turned cultural village, has at all times been a champion of artistic cross-pollination. With a constructing by OMA and furnishings collections by the likes of Faye Toogood and Andreu Carulla, it’s clear that design is on the coronary heart of the venture. At Potato Head, nevertheless, it goes hand in hand with environmental accountability. ‘After we began Potato Head, [one of our goals was] to be sustainable in a good looking manner,’ reads a be aware from founder Ronald Akili introducing the primary sustainability report from the corporate. ‘We need to create consciousness by inspiring as an alternative of preaching. We need to present experiences and merchandise the place folks wouldn’t have to compromise on magnificence, consolation, and accessibility with a purpose to be sustainable.’
Being zero-waste and contributing to a means of native regeneration had been equally vital to the founder, and its newly launched assortment of objects by long-term collaborator Max Lamb acts as a manifesto of kinds for what Potato Head stands for, and what a mannequin for sustainable manufacturing may appear like sooner or later.
Max Lamb at Potato Head
Plastic chair, made with flat sheets of 100 per cent recycled HDPE
(Picture credit score: Dwinanda Aldyan)
Lamb has collaborated with Potato Head for a couple of years: his first go to in 2019 resulted in a sequence of in-room objects and furnishings, round designs all created in a closed-loop and produced domestically by artisans and makers. ‘I used to be invited to design these merchandise, the concept was that they need to be made in Indonesia, as there may be already a wealth of strategies and crafts,’ says Lamb. ‘So I spent two weeks travelling to totally different craftspeople, and what began as a small itinerary quickly grew, as we stored discovering extra locations, from pure dye corporations to ceramic producers, to stone staff who work with volcanic rock to historically make the small shrines you discover in native properties.’
Lamb on the glassmaker’s workshop in Bali, the place the Damaged Glass household is produced utilizing recycled glass from Potato
(Picture credit score: Dwinanda Aldyan)
Lamb, whose apply focuses on making and experimenting (his furnishings has been constructed from a plethora of supplies, from cardboard packing containers to his grandfather’s tree), was proper at dwelling within the wealthy cultural and artisanal panorama of Bali and its environment. ‘Earlier than touring there, I used to be studying in regards to the native brick and clay industries, and that sparked a analysis into the geology of the island,’ he says. ‘I used to be within the Ring of Hearth and Bali being a volcanic island, and the way the rock formations and the final panorama are knowledgeable by its geology and the geothermal exercise.’
Throughout his go to, nevertheless, Lamb began taking a look at Bali as a spot to provide his work. ‘I used to be attempting to expertise Bali as deeply as attainable to know what the manufacturing and craft and materials alternatives had been there,’ he explains. ‘But it surely was additionally essentially a dialog between me as a designer and the lodge, to determine all product alternatives to serve the lodge’s visitors.’
The HDPE sheet with CNC cuts for the chair – the unfavourable materials is used for smaller objects
(Picture credit score: Adrian Morris)
On the time, Potato Head was already championing a zero-waste mannequin (having gone carbon impartial in 2017, the primary hospitality firm in Indonesia to take action), and the dialog quickly shifted from craft to waste supplies. ‘Being hospitality, there’s a fixed inflow of individuals and merchandise, meals and drinks and packaging being generated, and Potato Head recognised this,’ explains Lamb. ‘So what do you do with these supplies?’
One of many first merchandise they created collectively was a chair, constructed from recycling 833 plastic bottles. That includes a vibrant marbled impact, the chair has impressed a sequence of small objects made utilizing the identical system, from coasters to trays, all with the distinctive multichromatic sample.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Potato Head)
The plastic is all recycled from supply packaging and confiscated water bottles (visitors should not allowed to enter the Potato Head premises with non-reusable plastics), granulated on-site, and heat-pressed into sheets which are then used to create Lamb’s merchandise. ‘What’s nice is that they constructed a manufacturing unit, but it surely’s not behind the scene, it’s entrance of home: you get your plastics confiscated, you see it go into the granulator, the warmth press, the CNC machine,’ says Lamb. ‘It is a actually nice response to the uncontrollable quantity of waste materials being generated by means of working any hospitality institution.’
99.5 per cent of Potato Head’s waste – together with meals – is at present recycled and put again into the lodge, with a minimal 0.5 per cent going to landfill.
Wasted Assortment 001 by Max Lamb for Potato Head
Damaged Ceramic household, that includes three bowls (above) and three plates, made from Bali clay and a glaze constructed from powdered glass recycled from Potato Head
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Potato Head)
This month marks the launch of Wasted, a brand new model by Potato Head that Lamb describes as ‘an angle and an ideology for turning waste into new objects for each lodge visitors and the broader neighborhood of folks.’
With merchandise designed by Lamb (who can also be at present managing the design course of and serving because the model’s artistic director), Wasted is an embodiment of Potato Head’s sustainability mission.
Styroshell Household, made from recycled Styrofoam and seashell waste
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Potato Head)
The objects on provide type a panorama of craft in Bali, and the alternatives present in recycling. The eight collections embrace objects constructed from HDPE plastics, composted natural matter, recycled linens from the lodge and eating places, damaged and re-blown glass, cooking oil remodeled into scented and refillable candles, recycled ceramics, oyster shells, and hand-woven Balinese bamboo.
A small assortment of ceramic plates and bowls are made in Ubud by a small pottery, utilizing Balinese clay and a glaze constructed from damaged glass from the lodge’s waste stream.
Styroshell, a specially-developed materials patented by Potato Head, mixing melted and combined styrofoam, HDPE plastic, oyster shells, and limestone, was used for cleaning soap dispensers, trays and bins.
Coasters made from HDPE leftover from the chair pr
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Potato Head)
From the offcuts of his HDPE plastic chair, he has created trays and coasters. This fashion of working by repurposing supplies is second-nature to Lamb: pondering by way of waste, utilizing the unfavourable to his manufacturing’s constructive has typically been the case together with his work (and as a younger designer beginning out, that was a necessity to be economical with supplies). ‘I very hardly ever speculate: I practically at all times solely make what folks ask me to make,’ he provides. ‘I’ve a way of accountability in my apply, I recognise that it’s very troublesome to be productive with out being damaging. However I am very fortunate in that I’ve a hungry viewers, desirous to eat my work and fee me to make items. And I feel there’s one thing very, handy about the truth that I run a workshop-based design apply.’ This modus operandi is now feeding into his work for Potato Head.
Compost Dye pouch made from lodge linen dyed with marigolds recovered from choices at shrines throughout Potato Head
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Potato Head)
The textile merchandise are a very good instance of Lamb’s pondering all through this venture. ‘Resort linens have a brief lifespan, they get stains, they tear, and cannot be put again on the beds,’ he explains. The gathering consists of giant baggage, but additionally smaller textile objects dyed utilizing marigolds (recovered from choices left at shrines throughout Potato Head), like compact pouches, pencil instances and sun shades instances, that may be obtained from smaller scraps. ‘By having a spread of various scaled objects or merchandise, we’re capable of finest make the most of as a lot of that materials as attainable.’
Wasted by Potato Head: what’s subsequent
Lamb with the glassmaker’
(Picture credit score: Dwinanda Aldyan)
The way forward for this venture for Potato Head could be very a lot about collaboration, because the mannequin for Wasted is supposed to grow to be an open-source blueprint for harvesting waste. ‘It isn’t about exporting these merchandise, however about exporting this concept of working,’ explains Lamb.
Waste cooking oil candle, in a glass container reduce from a beer bottle
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Potato Head)
‘This isn’t meant to be good design,’ he stresses, noting that an elaborate design would defy the aim of the venture. ‘I do not need to simply adorn or embellish for the sake of it. It is at all times in regards to the materials, and if the shape might be as quiet and easy and purposeful as attainable, then the factor that can actually shine would be the materials. After which that enables the story of Wasted to be advised far more.
‘It’s meant to be about utilizing a useful resource that might in any other case be thrown away, and serving to Potato Head take care of the waste they generate every day. And to set the cogs in movement for establishing a brand new tradition.’
Supply: Wallpaper
