TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
‘Design Matters Lab’ transforms waste into wonder
Leather clutches are nothing new, but ones made from chicken feet skin? That turns heads.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Bio-based materials: Tofu wastewater is fermented with bacteria in a petri dish (left) to create a diffuser screen for the portable lamp, Lampoep. Unprocessed tofu wastewater with high pH levels (right), is often discarded into gutters by home-based tofu producers in Yogyakarta. (JP/Sylviana Hamdani)
O
ur planet is drowning in waste and the tide keeps rising. Each year, more than two billion tonnes of trash are discarded worldwide, much of it made up of persistent, non-biodegradable materials.
“Every year, we generate enough plastic waste to fill the United Kingdom’s Wembley Stadium 900 times over,” said Summer Xia, copresident of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) Indonesia Cluster and country director of British Council Indonesia, at the opening of the Design Matters Lab exhibition at Erasmus Huis Jakarta on Feb. 27. “Imagine walking into that iconic stadium, not to cheering fans, but mountains of discarded packaging and single-use plastics.”
“Not exactly the kind of legacy we want to leave for our future generations.”
To confront this crisis, EUNIC Indonesia Cluster launched an open call in mid-2024, inviting Indonesian and European designers and researchers to rethink waste from the ground up. Ten participants, five from each region, were selected and paired for a month-long online bootcamp, followed by a two-week hands-on residency in Bandung, West Java’s micro-factories, where they worked with waste and bio-based materials.
Now their groundbreaking creations are on display at Erasmus Huis Jakarta until May 3, each one showing how design can transform what we discard into something thoughtful, useful and even beautiful.
‘Cuir Mâché’ by Rininta Isdyani (Indonesia), Alve Lagercrantz (Germany) and Hirka (Bandung micro-factory)
Leather clutches are nothing new, but ones made from chicken feet skin? That turns heads.
