Nature as design(er)

This year’s European Design Festival took place in Tallinn. The event was co-organized by European Design Awards and Estonian Design Centre. The topic for this year’s festival was “Beyond Design”. Series of events took place during the festival discussing and questioning what is the role of design today and tomorrow.

VIVITA organised two material-circularity themed workshops for the youth: one as a public event and one for Vivinauts. The aim of the workshops was to introduce the natural material circularity as an endless inspiration and role model for designing new man-made circular materials. The subject for our workshops was an EGG.

During the first half of the workshop Carlo introduced to Vivinauts what is inside an egg. Together, many delicious treats were cooked, such as meringue, almond cookies, omelette and the all favourite — koogelmoogel.

While the edible treats were cooking, the leftover materials were brought into focus. The materials left were eggshells, that consist of calcium carbonate, and egg-boxes made from cellulose fibres. Teele did a little introduction of how nature itself acts as a designer and creates materials that decay in time.

Inspired by nature’s examples, all the participants got to make a bowl from the eggshells, starch-based polymer and cellulose fibres combined into a composite material. Every bowl was coloured by the egg-shells natural colour palette and signed with every author’s hand-printed creation. Although the bowls are not usable for eating, the bowls themselves, after their life-cycle, are a nutritious food for calcium-loving plants!

VIVITA Estonia / VIVISTOP Telliskivi