"Green Haus" exhibition
Overview
Trash Talk – San Francisco State University Whips Up Garbage-Based Showroom Showcasing New Sustainable Materials Library
Agave-based plastic materials tile showcased at a hand crafted "kitchen" made from recycled garbage
GREEN HAUS, a wildly creative showcase developed for the new SF State University Sustainable Materials Learning Library is made wholly from re-purposed garbage.
Our ingenious Visual Communication Design students, alongside their innovative professor JD Beltran, have delivered a valuable resource that will help our students and faculty for years to come.”
— SFSU Director of Design Mari Hulick
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, November 30, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ -- San Francisco State University (SFSU) has just launched GREEN HAUS, an ingenious, wildly creative showcase for the new SFSU Sustainable Materials Learning Library founded by the SFSU School of Design.
It’s made from re-purposed garbage.
GREEN HAUS spotlights novel sustainable materials being developed and created by inventors and manufacturers worldwide, with samples collected for the new SFSU Sustainable Materials Learning Library. The library now provides a critical resource for designers, artists, and the public to source recycled or biodegradable materials to use in creating new products.
To showcase the sustainable materials, the entire interior of a home—complete with living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom—is crafted from old newspapers and discarded packing boxes, garbage scavenged from the school’s dumpsters, and wood scraps from the recycle bin of the school’s woodshop. SFSU students dreamed up and crafted an entire kitchen counter, kitchen island, dining room table, and sink using only old boxes, leftover hardware and wood, and paint. There’s a sewing machine created from scrap wood and cardboard, and in the bathroom, there is even a papier mâché toilet and tub.
Nearby elevators were being replaced, so the elevator repair crew even got into the act and donated the leftover wooden spools from the elevator cables, which the students painted and transformed into pedestal and side tables. SFSU shop staff Rob Bolduc, Justin Wong, and Richard Ortiz also pitched in, assisting the students’ efforts in designing, building, and installing shelving and furniture structures utilizing scrap wood from the woodshop.
This showcase ingeniously highlights innovative sustainable biomaterials for creating new consumer products such as leather made from cactus, pineapple, or kombucha, “plastic” made from agave, stunningly beautiful bathroom tiles made from eggshells, packaging composed from mycelium mushrooms, and sewing thread created from wood pulp.
The students adhered to the creative use of sustainable materials in every step of this imaginative endeavor. They first collected physical samples of sustainable biomaterials from all over the world, obtaining a sample that would fit within a 5” x 5” square of an information tile. Then—rather than showcase these new sustainable materials in a traditional exhibition of simply mounting the tiles on walls—the students brainstormed creating an actual home showroom from scratch, utilizing a sustainability mindset to demonstrate how the sustainable materials can be utilized for new products in our day-to-day lives.
The ”GREEN HAUS” showcase for the new SFSU Sustainable Materials Learning Library will open to the public with an reception on Friday, December 1, from 12:00 noon-3:00pm. The exhibition will then be up for an additional week, through Thursday December, 7, 2023.
GREEN HAUS
DesignSpace, Fine Arts Bldg 115
Dec 1 – Dec 7, 2023
10:00am-4:00pm
Opening Reception: Friday, Dec 1, 12:00 noon – 3:00pm
This past year, SFSU School of Design students and SFSU faculty Professor JD Beltran, along with the support of the SFSU Design Director Mari Hulick have founded and created the first West Coast college-based materials library focused exclusively on showcasing sustainable and/or recycled materials for designers, artists, and the creative industry to research and utilize in their projects. The new SFSU Sustainable Materials Learning Library, headquartered in the SFSU campus Humanities Building, will be accessible to the SFSU community and the wider general public to educate library patrons on the latest developments in sustainable materials that contribute to a circular economy and climate action.
Director Hulick remarked, “Our students and the SFSU community have needed a materials library for some time now. Our ingenious Visual Communication Design students, alongside their innovative professor JD Beltran, have delivered a valuable resource that will help our students and faculty for years to come. They designed a system that is informative, flexible, and beautiful. We know this sets a standard for other materials libraries throughout higher education.”
With their student and faculty achievements in the field of sustainable design, the SFSU School of Design was invited to showcase their work at the 2023 international Biodesign Challenge Summit in New York this past summer and was just invited, once again, to participate in the Biodesign Challenge Summit for 2024. Student teams travel to New York to present their work at the New York Museum of Modern Art and The New School, Parsons School of Design showcase.
