Nexus Designs x Design Futures Lab

Launched at Material Matters 02 for Melbourne Design Week 2024, this collaboration interrogates the development of sustainable materials, applying a scientific lens to design practice in order to create a better future. Nexus Designs and Design Futures Lab partnered to focus on using spent coffee grounds to create innovative biomaterials that are more circular and ecologically minded.

We look to authentic grassroots creative play and exploration as an avenue to innovation. Working with young creative talents from Sacred Heart College in Geelong – who had already been working in biomateriality with waste products including coffee – we held multiple workshops and facilitated opportunities for conceptualising and prototyping materiality variations. Technical developments and explorations used 3D printers, moulding, laser cutting, kiln drying and binding agent exploration to test the capabilities and possible applications of these new materials.

Image credits: Nexus Designs, Design Futures Lab, Marie-Luise Skibbe & Matthew McQuiggan Photography