Aside from the rare up-cycled or open design project at this past week’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, there were very few radically new concepts and a lot of kinda-pretty-but-useless stuff. Very few designers targeted the environment in radical new ways, and almost none contributed significant inventions. One booth, however, had two promising new materials on exhibit: a laminate made from paper which could be structured into a chair (above) and a moldable material based on cellulose without synthetic binders which was made into a lamp (below). Material inventions of this nature could allow designers the freedom to experiment with form without all of the damage it usually ends up causing.
