Hasta La Ideas

Madrid-based designer Jorge Penadés has been working on ways to salvage wasted leather. We don’t mean old leather that’s been discarded, we mean brand-new leather, fresh off of the factory floor. “Leather is a beautiful material but very inefficient in terms of its manufacturing process due to its natural origins,” he writes. “No matter which tanning process a hide went through, the quality of a piece of leather depends directly on the part of the animal that came from. The higher the movement [on the cow’s body], the lower the quality:”

Those ratios being what they are, “companies involved in the production of leather goods produce a large amount of discarded materials, leftovers and offcuts.” Thus Penadés has been experimenting with shredding the scraps and forming them into a new raw material that he can then shape into furniture.

This video shows you his forming process:

We’re curious as to what type of resin he’s using; his project description says that his end material, which he calls Structural Skin, “is made 100% from an animal source,” but plant resins come from trees and synthetic resin obviously comes out of a lab.

Penadés’ early attempts at reworking the material yielded the finish you see below (and in the video above):

However, further experimentation has led him to shave the material on four sides, yielding a different look:

Penadés and his work will be appearing at next month’s DMY Berlin Design Festival under the “New Talents” category.