Dec 05

Furniture made from soil then baked like bread by Erez Nevi Pana

Posted in: soil

Eindhoven designer Erez Nevi Pana has developed a dough made from soil and fungus that can be baked in an oven to create stools and chairs strong enough to sit on.

Furniture made from soil and baked like bread by Erez Nevi Pana

Influenced by childhood memories of playing in his parents’ greenhouse, Erez Nevi Pana began experimenting with soil as an accessible material for producing affordable, environmentally-friendly products during his studies at Design Academy Eindhoven.

Furniture made from soil and baked like bread by Erez Nevi Pana

By combining it with fungi and other natural materials, the designer developed a mixture that rises like a dough due to a biochemical reaction and can then be shaped using plaster or wooden moulds.

Furniture made from soil and baked like bread by Erez Nevi Pana

The resulting objects are baked so that the mixture hardens, becoming robust enough to carry the weight of a person or to be sanded, sawn and drilled.

Furniture made from soil and baked like bread by Erez Nevi Pana

“At first, I started with a flat surfaces, just as an experiment to test the strength and durability of the material,” the designer told Dezeen. “I was curious to know how strong is it? Can the mixture hold human weight?”

Furniture made from soil and baked like bread by Erez Nevi Pana

Following a process of refinement involving trialling different amounts of the various ingredients in his kitchen, a suitable combination was identified and a series of simply moulded items of furniture were produced.

Furniture made from soil and baked like bread by Erez Nevi Pana

“There is a fine line between the state where the mixture is strong or delicate – either not baked enough or burned,” explained the designer. “So the baking time has to be strict and every chair has its own period of time that it is baked in an oven.”

Furniture made from soil and baked like bread by Erez Nevi Pana

As well as furniture, Nevi Pana has experimented with moulding cups using the material, which he claimed was capable of holding the water but gave it an unwanted flavour.

Furniture made from soil and baked like bread by Erez Nevi Pana
Concept drawing for chairs

“The recipe is not perfect – there’s some things that I still need to understand but I feel I am on the right track,” added the designer. “If the material is impermeable, many choices are possible and it opens the gate for many routes in which I design any object I desire.”

The project is on show at an exhibition called Biodesign at The New Institute in Rotterdam, alongside plants that could grow lace from their roots and tiles made from snail poo, which runs until 5 January 2014.

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like bread by Erez Nevi Pana appeared first on Dezeen.

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Dec 08

Rammed Earthenware by Bril

Posted in: Bril, Fumiaki Goto, slideshows, soil

These plates made of tightly-packed soil were produced by Japanese design collective Bril (+ slideshow).

Rammed Earthenware by Bril

Each plate in the Rammed Earthenware collection by Bril is made from a combination of soil in various colours, sand, lime and water.

Rammed Earthenware by Bril

The mixture is poured into a mould and rammed with three wooden sticks, each with a different shaped tip, until it becomes hard. ”The top surface has the marks of being rammed and looks like lunar craters,” explain the designers.

Rammed Earthenware by Bril

The plates are then taken out of the mould and left to dry for a few weeks.

Rammed Earthenware by Bril

The plates have been produced as part of a series of pieces made from soil using architectural techniques.

Rammed Earthenware by Bril

Bril is a collective formed by designers Tatsuro Kuroda, Jo Nakamura and Fumiaki Goto, who all graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2011.

Rammed Earthenware by Bril

We previously featured a set of ceramic vessels designed by Goto with pointed graphite bottoms to be used like a pencil.

Rammed Earthenware by Bril

We’ve also featured a collection of vessels made from radioactive Japanese soil and a “brick replacement service” which made bricks from soil and seeds.

See all our stories about plates »
See all our stories about homeware »

Here’s some more information from the designers:

Bril
Rammed Earthenware

Cutting, casting, bending, polishing, stamping, shaving, lathing and so on. Many and various techniques of processing have been generated and they are still developing. “Ramming’ is one of the most primitive techniques through history. We focused on the technique and tried to combine such a primitive technique and a primitive material.

“Rammed earth” is one of the most primitive techniques to build walls. The way is just to ram the mixture of soil strongly. So this simple technique has been used around the world since long time ago though the details were different.

The aim of this project is to apply this primitive technique into making products. Though architecture needs the strength to be stable, living products don’t do it so much and have their own possibilities of design.

Rammed Earthenware is the one made with ramming the mixture of several colours of soil, sand, lime and a bit of water. At first, the mixture is filled in a mold and is roughly pushed by fingers. Secondly it is strongly rammed by three kinds of wooden sticks whose tips are different for a half hour. It gradually gets hard and the sound of ramming it becomes dry and high. After a half day, it comes off from the mold and is dried for a few weeks.

The top surface has the marks of being rammed and looks like lunar craters. Since the lime inside has the feature to absorb carbon dioxide in the air and turn back into limestone, it gets harder and becomes limestone made out of soil after a period. The soil of this project is from several places in Japan. Its color is not the one of pigment but the one of itself.

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by Bril appeared first on Dezeen.

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