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Masters of design
INSPIRED BY THE JAPANESE TEA CEREMONY A COMMON PROJECT Above, lamp components made out of recycled plastic bottles. The project involves artisanal communities in different countries (opposite page): from Colombia to Ethiopia. Below, Alvaro Catalán de Ocón.
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Alvaro Catalán de Ocón studied in London and Milan, where I interviewed him while he was preparing for the 2015 Salone del Mobile (in partnership with Francesco Faccin, his good friend and colleague). Important museums and galleries all over the world have exhibited his works and awarded him prizes and nominations. In recent years, the Madrid-based designer has attracted attention for the project that started his career as a designer-entrepreneur. Combining collaborations with different companies and his innate vocation for self-production. question: Alvaro, tell us the story of the PET Lamp project, with which you transform recycled plastic bottles into unique lamps. answer: In 2011 I was invited to Columbia to participate in a project to raise awareness on the difficult issue of plastic bottle disposal in the Colombian Amazon among the community and the government. The following year, with the patronage of Coca-Cola and the cooperation of Artesanías de Colombia, I organised a workshop with the artisan community of Cauca to elaborate on the idea of recycling and transformation. The first results of this project were exhibited in 2013 at the Galleria Rossana Orlandi, in Milan. The neck of the bottle, round and transparent, sparked the idea of the lamps, and a
stripped bamboo utensil that is used in the Japanese tea ceremony, very similar to a bottle, inspired the technique for cutting and weaving plastic with other fibres to create lampshades that are always different from one another. q. Since then, the project has been replicated in other countries and the lamps have taken on a life of their own. A. Exactly. The experience in Colombia made me realise the potential of this project, which is both social and cultural, and an opportunity to establish microenterprises from which the local communities can benefit economically (4,000 pieces from the Colombian collection have been sold in two years). The artisans make the lampshades that are assembled and cabled in my Madrid studio, where seven employees dedicate 70% of their time to the PET Lamp project. Then the lamps are distributed around the world, because there is hardly any local demand, since folk handicrafts are little appreciated in the communities where they are made. Instead, we introduce them in the circuit of design, which makes the difference. Most people buy the lamps because they like the design, and only later do they realise that there is a bottle inside. They understand in retrospect the story of my creations, which are the product of a global industrial object (which has a very short lifespan but is almost inde-
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