Personally I find those design projects interesting that use used materials to produce usable products. Or - in other words: projects that give trash an added value.
This pictures shows a board or shelf that uses stacking boxes that are used in industry and that have standardized measures. I found the picture on the website of Christiane Hoegner, a designer living in Brussels. I am sure there are many many more such projects - a lot for sure also on design schools worldwide.
Using products for as long as possible is often the most sustainable way of usage. So extending their life by inventing a second use makes a lot of sense. I am sure that - sad enough - the best designers in those things are the people living in poor countries that depend on using things that they found in rubbish.
So what we do can already be considered as decadent. But projects like Fernando and Humberto Campana's »Favela Chair« that was inspired »by the ad-hoc shelters which are built out mud, sand, scraps of wood, bricks and stones in the hills and on the fringes of urban expansion around Rio de Janeiro« (or in other words: inspired by the life of the very poor people on our planet) really are unacceptable.
This chair, made »from the same wood used to build the favelas«, that is on sale for $ 2,985, really represents the image of the designer that probably many have and that unfortunately gains more and more truth: the stupid stylist that is creating one and another sofa or chair and who does not care what's going on around his hedonistic bubble.
