Memento Element

This material proposal extracts colors remaining in waste, such as used coffee grounds and off-specification fruit and vegetables, using warmed resin, then hardens and preserves the resulting gradients.
The project goes beyond reusing waste to treat the entire time from an object's creation to the end of its role as a subject of design.
A material used in construction becomes shop fittings, then vessels or cases, and eventually plant pots or insect habitats. As plants and vegetables grow there again, the material's colors enter a new cycle. Rather than ending with one use, the material changes form and function to take on the role needed at each stage.
Its colors are traces of time carried by the original waste. The proposal reconsiders objects as temporary forms within a long cycle, rather than finished products.
It carries forward the colors and memories left in waste, connecting a material's past to its next use.