Excerpt: Seed Bed by Studio Ossidiana is an architectural structure made of Alcantara that resembles an enclosure, a hortus conclusus designed to protect, celebrate, and cultivate the surrounding nature. Created within the BioGrounds project, it reimagines Alcantara as a reusable raw material within a complete life cycle, embodying the principles of the circular economy and sustainability.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] In the twelfth edition of the collaboration between Alcantara and the MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo (national museum of 21st-century art), for the first time Alcantara becomes a reusable raw material within a complete life cycle, wholly in keeping with the principles of the circular economy.
Seed Bed by Studio Ossidiana, a duo formed in Rotterdam by Alessandra Covini and Giovanni Bellotti, was created as part of the BioGrounds nature project. An architectural structure made of Alcantara that resembles an enclosure, a hortus conclusus that aims to protect, celebrate and cultivate the surrounding nature. Two versions of Alcantara were chosen to produce it; one made using partially bio-based polymer content and the other, used for the first time in the field of design, made from post-consumer recycled polyester that has been certified to comply with the Textile Exchange Recycled Claim Standard.
At the end of the Seed Bed exhibition cycle, the Alcantara used for the installation will – for the first time ever – be regenerated. This is made possible by gr3n SA, an innovative start-up on a mission to eliminate plastic waste on a global scale. The new collaboration between gr3n and Alcantara, following on from work that began more than a year ago, aims to breathe new life into both post-industrial waste and post-consumer products in order to recover raw materials at end-of-life and, through depolymerisation, obtain a material that can then be used for new applications, from automotive to packaging and even fashion.
This innovative process called MADE – Microwave Assisted DEpolymerisation – enables the recycling of a wider range of polyester-based materials and will prevent otherwise non-recyclable materials from going to landfill or being incinerated.
Through this new project, Alcantara confirms its constant commitment to an issue – sustainability – that has seen the company at the forefront since 2009, the year it achieved Carbon Neutrality status for the first time, as certified by TÜV SÜD.
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