Do you think you know plastics? We may be surrounded by this material, but not many of us may be aware of its history and of all the different fields in which it is used, not to mention all the latest and most innovative solutions to reduce the impact of plastics on our planet. But, fear not, a new exhibition at Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, may provide us with some answers and offer us insights into new eco-friendly materials as well.
"Plastic: Remaking Our World" opens with a large-scale video installation that analyses the conflicts linked to the production and use of plastic. Images showing unspoilt nature are juxtaposed with film documents about the plastic industry to highlight how, in more or less 100 years, the synthetic materials derived from coal and oil have radically changed our lives and our planet as well.
The second part of the exhibition will prove extremely fascinating for students and visitors who work in the design industry: here the curators created a visual chronology of plastics starting from plant or animal-based materials.
Horn and tortoiseshell were used to make drinking vessels, embellish cutlery or for small accessories such as hair combs; gutta-percha was instead made from the latex of gutta-percha trees, and was employed for decorative objects and insulation of underwater telegraph cables.
Soon, new developments marked the arrival on the market of innovative materials: John Wesley Hyatt invented celluloid in the 1860s while looking for a replacement for ivory in the production of billiard balls; around 1907, Bakelite, became the first plastic made of purely synthetic components.
Named after its creator, Leo Baekeland, bakelite was widely used for the most disparate objects: being nonconductive it was employed for light switches, wall sockets, or radio sets, but also for telephones and for iconic Art Deco jewelry pieces.
At times synthetic materials were employed to make striking details in pieces made with more traditional materials: Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh was commissioned by Wenman J. Bassett-Lowke to renovate, extend and furnish his home, 78 Derngate, Northampton, in 1916.
Among the pieces for this house there was also a smoker's cabinet, painted black and featuring bold yellow erinoid (a casein plastic; Mackintosh already used casein plastic inlays, probably German-made Galalith, in the Chinese Room at the Ingram Street Tea Rooms, Glasgow, in 1911) triangle and lozenge-shaped inlays.
The petrolchemical industry developed from the 1920s onwards, with companies such as Dow, Du Pont, Imperial Chemical Industries, and IG Farben, and, as the years passed, industrial design embraced the possibilities offered by these materials. Designers Egmont Arens, Wells Coates, and Gio Ponti used them for some of their most iconic pieces.
The Second World War introduced new materials and in particular Plexiglas for aircraft canopies and Nylon for parachutes and, later, stockings, a product that heralded a revolution in fashion.
At the end of the conflict, though, plastic took new shapes and roles with the arrival on the market of disposable cups and plates, Tupperware, and toys such as Lego or the Barbie doll.
At the end of the '50s plastic was employed to make larger experimental works: in 1957 Monsanto installed the all-plastic House of the Future at Disneyland to show how the material could be used in the building industry as well.
The '60s introduced the Space Age and the utopian potential of plastics, as showed by Eero Aarnio's futuristic Ball Chair (1963), Gino Sarfatti's Moon Lamp (1969), and Panasonic's Toot-a-Loop (1971), a plastic bracelet with a built-in radio (one of the first wearables).
Mention space discoveries and it will be impossible not to think about clothes like the white and silver "Space Age" dress from the 1960s on display, an introduction to the wardrobe of the future. Plastic boomed, but, with it, also a new throwaway culture that actually didn't even suffer from the effects of the 1973 oil crisis.
The decades that followed brought new challenges and a counter trend began to emerge with designers, including Jane Atfield and Enzo Mari, reusing and recycling plastics. One of the most colourful examples is Bär + Knell's chair made from melted-down plastic packaging.
Today, plastics are globally omnipresent and an intricate part of our lives: plastic saves us when it is used to make something vital like a disposable syringe or face masks, but it is life-threatening when we dispose of plastic-based products carelessly. Researches in the last few years showed us there are indeed microplastics in the soil, in the oceans, and in our bodies.
The final part of the exhibition looks at projects aimed at filtering plastic waste from rivers and oceans, such as The Ocean Clean Up, Everwave or The Great Bubble Barrier. Yet, reducing plastic waste is a long process that should also look at a different design approach that takes account of an object's entire life cycle. To this purpose Ineke Hans designed the Rex Chair (2011/2021), which can be returned to the manufacturer for repairs or recycling.
The Vitra Design Museum Gallery also includes a satellite exhibition with a focus on recycling: moving from the Precious Plastic project launched by Dave Hakkens in 2013, illustrating how plastic waste can be turned into a valuable resource, this space allows visitors to learn about different types of plastic and recycling systems, or discover intriguing projects like the FlipFlopi, in Kenya. The latter is a traditional sailing boat, a dhow, built from recycled plastic and now sailing the ocean to educate people about waste.
Visitors who are interested in bioplastics will be intrigued by Klarenbeek & Dros' remake of Peter Ghyczy's Garden Egg (1967) chair made using 3D printed algae-based plastics, and other projects such as bioplastic made by British start-up Shellworks using micro-organisms, and enzymes for plastic degradation, currently being researched and tested by the University of Portsmouth and ETH Zurich. And for the impenitent but eco-friendly fashionista, there is Karin Vlug's seamless jacket made with MycoTEX, the only 3D manufacturing method allowing for seamless and custom products grown from home compostable mushroom roots.
The exhibition proves that plastic remains a controversial material with a history suspended between innovation and consumerism. But the event also prompts visitors to look at their lifestyles and houses, consider the quantity of plastic in their lives, and think about how it can be reduced, replaced, recycled and reimagined (the ordinary plastic drinking bottle in the exhibition serves as a case study to show that reducing the high quantity of single-use plastic requires a combination of infrastructures, from deposit-return schemes to adapted production facilities, and alternatives such as drinking fountains).
After its presentation at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein (until 4th September 2022), the show will travel to V&A Dundee (29th October 2022 – 5th February 2023) and maat, Lisbon (Spring 2023).
Image credits for this post
1 and 2.
Installation view
"Plastic: Remaking Our World"
© Vitra Design Museum
Photo: Bettina Matthiessen
3.
Installation view
"Plastic: Remaking Our World"
© Vitra Design Museum, Photo: Bettina
Matthiessen © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021
4.
Maison Auguste Bonaz,
brooches made from galalith and silver plated lucite, c. 1920-30
© Vitra Design Museum
photo: Andreas Sütterlin
5.
Bakelite leaflet, 1930s;
Courtesy of Amsterdam Bakelite Collection
6.
Smoker’s Cabinet, 1916, Charles
Rennie Mackintosh
© Victoria and Albert Museum,
London
7.
Photo by Peter Stackpole, staged to illustrate an article on "Throwaway Living", LIFE magazine, August 1, 1955
© Getty / Photo: Peter Stackpole
8 - 11.
Installation view
"Plastic: Remaking Our World"
© Vitra Design Museum
Photo: Bettina Matthiessen
12.
Panasonic Toot-a-Loop R-72S radio, 1969–72
© Vitra Design Museum,
Photo: Andreas Sütterlin
13.
Bär+Knell, Müll Direkt, 1994
© Vitra Design Museum
photo: Jürgen Hans
15.
Ineke Hans, REX chair, 2021
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021 / Vitra Design Museum, photo: Andreas Sütterlin
15.
The Ocean Cleanup, system 002 deployed for testing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 2021
© The Ocean Cleanup
16.
The FlipFlopi, Kenya
Courtesy The Flipflopi
17.
MycoTEX in collaboration with Karin Vlug, MycoTEX seamless jacket;
Photo: Jeroen Dietz
18.
Installation view
"Plastic: Remaking Our World"
© Vitra Design Museum
Photo: Bettina Matthiessen
19.
Precious Plastic, shredded plastic;
Courtesy of Precious Plastic
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