NID students transforming used scrap into usable furniture!

A motorcycle fuel tank, a discarded vacuum cleaner, a used tyre and waste fabrics, a street lamp and the guard of a pedestal fan–sounds unlikely for these to be featured in an art piece, right? Find out how this list of scrap just made it to the list of must-haves. CY reporter Himanshu Nainani explores how NID students are creating sustainable furniture products using discarded scrap.

These 11 undergrads of the Furniture and Design Department, National Institute of Design (NID), are leaving no stone unturned to do their bit for the planet by creating aesthetic and sustainable furniture using scrap materials. Wittily named The Thrown Legacy, the exhibition inaugurated on April 10 is open for public. Mentored under senior associate professor Pravinsinh Solanki, the students went through a two-week long workshop to create all of these products. The students are the same right-minded folks who presented the ‘Pied Pipes exhibition’ in March of this year.

Furniture products included a rotating bookshelf called Toomes which is made out of various base parts of the chair such as footring (used to rest foot) and caster (wheeled device). Abhinav S. designed a coffee table named Ristretto using a functional street lamp and the guard of a pedestal fan (see image XX). The Epoch table lamp made from upcycled old vinyl records by Shravan Sreejith is a visual treat.

Apart from these, there are a lot of pop-coloured products exhibited. One such attraction is Manali Nama’s pink-hued Candy, which is a toy car that could carry a child weighing 30 kgs, made using a discarded vacuum cleaner body. Pushpendra Anand’s Contes Colores is made by using the traditional tyre swing with a creative twist by inculcating a wooden ring in between and weaving a ribbon in the centre to make the seating more child-friendly. Lil Buddy by Sangeetha Nandakumar, which looked like ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ at the first look, is actually an upcycled RO purifier converted into a toy truck for kids.

Imagine making furniture for tiny tots out of a motorcycle fuel tank! Reema Gokhale’s Sponge Bob Square Pants-inspired Perl is just that–a whale-shaped rocking furniture. WhileTalitha Rebello’s Angel Wings is a chair made using discarded fabric materials, which takes the shape of your back. Akansha Mary Bara’s Reef, a freestanding cloth hanger made using the guard of a pedestal fan and discarded rods suited the ambience well with a contrasting turquoise tone. Nihal Mehmood’s five-feet tall Kryptus is a cactus shaped creeper support from a discarded planter, a pedestal fan guard and rods. The Elan chair designed by Deepak C for children gave new life to the armrests of an old office revolving chair by using them as legs.

Architect Yatin Pandya, in an article on The Better India, shared that every single day Indian cities generate around 27.4 million tonnes of junk. Ahmedabad alone is responsible for creating 2750 metric tonnes of waste on a daily basis, he said. We need more mindful designers like these in the city who, through innovative ideas, can come up with industrially producible designs which can hopefully diminish this multiplying daily scale of waste! The Thrown Legacy will continue to surprise onlookers until April 14 and the visiting hours are between 12 to 6 pm at the Aquarium, NID, Paldi.

Read next: Well-known architect Yatin Pandya shares how he creates sustainable spaces for marginalised citizens by using scrap and waste materials.