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New Adventures in Cardboard

Exhibition / Installation

Partner Programme

18 — 26 Sept 2021

Industrial & Product Design, Interiors & Furniture

Garage at 4 Thurloe Place Mews

South Kensington

London

SW7 2HL

A shared experience of home life in recent times is that cardboard packaging is omnipresent. A less wasteful society could appreciate cardboard as a material more fundamental to living. Here we revisit the discarded shoe box, pizza box, poster tube and delivery carton as objects of significance and longevity.

A brief walk down a London street and you will find mountains of cardboard. Re-imagining what’s on our doorstep can point to a less wasteful future. Cardboard is in itself recycled and recyclable yet there is a gulf of potential between these two extremities. When reconsidered as a raw material it can be sourced locally and worked resourcefully, without specialist equipment or infrastructure. It is inherently sturdy, malleable, repairable and takes on patina through use. It is a versatile container and therefore is particularly interesting when used to house electronics. Cardboard also lends itself to transformative surface treatments, through printing, drawing and decoupage. Therefore cardboard can be interpreted as a surface, as well as an object, which creates a space for new and imaginative hybrid typologies. As part of Brompton Design District’s curated programme, From Here Onward, in a garage in Thurloe Place Mews, ‘New Adventures in Cardboard’ will be part exhibition and part maker space, where, over the course of the festival new cardboard objects will be made in situ and added into the collection.