VEGAN BY DESIGN: Why animal products are increasingly off the interiors
Whereas veganism might have once felt entrenched in radical politics and restricted diets, more recently it has made a step into the mainstream, opening up new opportunities for influence in unexpected parts of our lives, including our interiors.
RUTH LANG: In a time of climate emergency and devastating species loss, many of us are giving greater consideration to the impact of what we consume – and not just in terms of what we eat. Whereas veganism might have once felt entrenched in radical politics and restricted diets, more recently it has made a step into the mainstream, opening up new opportunities for influence in unexpected parts of our lives – including our interiors.
The fashion industry has led the way in the development, promotion and use of innovative vegan products, with brands such as Hugo Boss, Stella McCartney, Adidas and Gucci investing in the production of non-animal-based materials. Now, with a demonstrable popularity in the consumer market, such strategies are also being adopted by major workplace, hospitality and automotive brands.
Recognizing an increasingly ecological imperative for automotive customers – even in an industry inherently built on consumption – the Volvo-owned electric performance car, Polestar 2… eradicates traditionally familiar leather upholstery from the interior, substituting it with a fabric called WeaveTech. Rather than emulating the leather it replaces, WeaveTech embraces a character of its own, akin to the scuba diving wetsuit material that inspired it…
The use of vegan materials in the car industry highlights an inherent tension between veganism’s moral and ecological intentions. Demanding cruelty-free materials while simultaneously considering durability, ethical sourcing, embodied energy and the carbon footprint of a product is a complex task. It’s necessary to look into the entire production chain in the sourcing of materials, since the industry currently suffers from a lack of transparency…
Although the material specified may be vegan, many finishing options often contain animal-derived products, such as casein glue from milk proteins, purple colouring from sea snails, or mammal urine used as part of the dying process. Paints can contain bone derivatives or shellac resin from the female lac beetle, and even sandpaper and mechanical components have been found to incorporate animal products, a convention that has mostly gone unchallenged due to its lack of direct visibility. The impact of these more concealed products will take longer to address, but such change is more likely if demanded by end users, facilitated and implemented by design professionals…
Such imperatives are confronted in the design of WeWork’s fourth Amsterdam office on Stadhouderskade. In addition to WeWork’s ethos for low-carbon, minimal-waste workspaces, which includes an aspiration to consume 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025, the intention for this fit-out was to eradicate all leather and PVC from the interiors, and to rely more on the creative reuse of existing resources… Events hosted at WeWork spaces for the past two years have eradicated single-use plastics and featured vegetarian catering – which may seem like a small change, but multiplied by the number of members and their guests for each event across 859 locations globally, has a huge impact…
Jellymongers Bompas & Parr might seem unlikely innovators in the vegan design market, given their roots in spectacular pop-up events often orientated on gelatine-based food experiences (which on one occasion even involved the ingestion of ambergris, a substance produced by sperm whales). Yet their consistent challenge to culinary norms and expectations has positioned them perfectly to overhaul the hospitality industry’s approach to interior materials through the creation of the world’s first fully vegan hotel suite for Hilton Bankside in London…
Through reconsidering base principles of material choices more radically, and in learning from other cultures and disciplines, we can explore a far greater variety of possibilities for how we might live, as well as for what we might eat. The result of this radical rethinking is an all-pervading vegan experience, from check in to minibar – including snacks, toiletries, stationery (which excludes animal traces in the paper and ink that might ordinarily be used), and the products used to clean the suite. Rather than being stuffed with down feathers, pillows are provided with a choice of organic buckwheat or millet hulls, cotton-like kapok or bamboo fibres…
At present there is a hesitance to determine a new aesthetic that celebrates the potential that vegan design affords, instead stealthily adopting its ecological and moral credentials while appropriating mainstream aesthetics we feel more comfortable and familiar with. Yet as can be seen from these examples, vegan approaches to interior design have created new provocations for innovation rather than proving a negative constraint, necessitating new forms of creativity. By valuing the process of material development within such parameters, we might also open ourselves up to the discovery of potential new applications, and reveal ways that vegan design strategies can be celebrated in their own right, as we continue to question what is normal now, and what is right to do for the future. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEOS: