Post-Plastic Monobloc Featured in Brooklyn Design Exhibition
A Front-Row Seat to Post-Plastic Monobloc
Coffee acts as a major foundation in human life. For many people, it propels and sustains their day, and poses as a medium for meetings, conversations and midday breaks from a busy schedule. CASE faculty member, Josh Draper is harnessing the power of this core substance by creating a healthy and sustainable material from coffee ground waste. As a part of this initiative, Draper created a coffee-based chair that is featured in Inside~Out: Grounded in Nature, an indoor/outdoor exhibition exploring the role of nature in mentoring design, curated by Kin & Company. Draper’s piece, Post-Plastic Monobloc is one of 22 works selected from independent studios featured in the show, located in the leasing office of Bergen, a new residential development in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Bergen features 105 residences “inspired by a fundamental way of living that celebrates the imperfect qualities of life.” [3]Designed by creative leaders Frida Escobedo, Workstead, DXA Studio, and Patrick Cullina Bergen is thoughtfully composed to celebrate the natural environment.
Inside~Out: Grounded in Nature, welcomes the opening of the new development. The exhibit “exhibition explores the role of nature in mentoring design”[4] highlighting the importance of natural materials and sustainability in the urban built environment. Draper’s contribution is an extension of his ongoing research and projects using coffee waste as a sustainable, architectural material. [5]
Seen.today said of this year’s Inside~Out “this collection is much more experimental. Notable pieces inside are Josh Draper’s conventionally shaped chair made with coffee grounds, egg shells and rice starch.” [6]
The basis for the piece is the Monobloc chair, a complex icon of outdoor summer furniture. Made of polypropene, it is light, cheap, stackable, and comfortable. Polypropylene is the second largest plastic resin by production volume with a $100 billion market as of 2022. Its production makes a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, discharges toxins when burned and degrades into microplastics which harm aquatic ecosystems and human health.
Draper’s chair is composed of a coffee clay material, which is a bio composite of waste coffee grounds, eggshells, rice starch and jute fiber. Fabrication incorporated the use of the plastic chair itself as a mold to dry the coffee clay using a strong, light honeycomb pattern to give the material structural depth. In this way, Post-Plastic Monobloc turns the plastic Monobloc inside out by shifting the smooth side to the bottom and back, away from the user. This inversion offers the user a new range of tactile experiences that occur in tension with the perception of the chair’s familiar form.
Post-Plastic Monobloc forces us to explore material composition and the processes of reuse in a world where consumption levels are at their peak. The position of this art piece and exhibit within the Real Estate and Development sphere highlights the intersection of natural materials, design and construction. It evokes questions about human interaction with built space, especially dwellings, and the lifecycles of materials and consumption within them. Through innovative composition and inception, the Post-Plastic Monobloc chair supports the philosophy and mission at CASE to reimagine standard architectural, ecological, economic and social practices to push the world of design toward a more sustainable future.
Show Photography by Jonathan Hokklo
[3] https://bergenbrooklyn.com/
[4] https://insideout.show/
[5] https://www.case.rpi.edu/research/waste-acoustics
[6] https://seen.today/2024/09/27/insideout-2024/
Media Contact:
Kathie Brill, Program Manager
Brillk@rpi.edu