Plastic Rivers
Urban and Public Furniture Design
Plastic Rivers has been born from the brief provided by GAN Rugs to design a collection of rugs fabricated from recycled PET fibres.
Alvaro Catalan de Oc6n will unveil Plastic Rivers for the first time at Rossana Orlando in September 2021; a collection that is as originai as it is contentious. Capturing aerial views of four of the World’s worst offending rivers in terms of piastie waste, the Madrid-based designer has fabricated a series of rugs in collaboration with GAN Rugs: YANGTZE, INDUS, GANGES, and NIGER from recycled PET, utilising the technique of hand tufting to bring these visions of our unravelling yet interwoven World to life.
Each of the PLASTIC RIVERS pieces hides behind their somewhat digitai aesthetic the irreplaceable human component of manual work and a call to action: to break the cycle of plastic waste that ends up in our seas and oceans.
Alvaro Catalan de Oc6n, who is credited with a pragmatic and reductionist vision, has gained recognition and acclaim thanks to his continent spanning ‘PET lamps’; a project focused on plastic reuse. Plastic Rivers pivots to recycling, and speaks to the necessity to raise awareness, through craftsmanship, of one of the great global problems of the industriai age.
Project purpose: Locai Communities in the Philippines and the Hospitality & Food and Beverage Industry in Qatar.
Sustainability is the key of the nowadays design world. Rotate, designed to be printed in 3D, can be obtained by using recycled and recyclable plastic (ABS, PP, PE, PET) from other dispenser’s waste (production and post-consumer).
Baltic Sea, industriai leftovers and consumer plastic.
Source of plastic: Indian Recycled PET