Amir Zinaburg's Recycled Designs Can-Can

So far on Green Prophet we’ve seen aluminum soda cans transformed into flowers and window store displays.  But we’ve never seen them transformed into furniture.  Amir Zinaburg’s designs show us what the can can do.

A graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (together with other Israeli eco-designers Erez Mulai, Zohar Yarom and Yoav Kotik), Zinaburg trained as an industrial designer.

The three piece line of furniture that he created – which includes a chair, a bar stool, and an armchair – is created entirely out of repurposed aluminum soda cans and is titled “Refurnish Your Memory”.

Zinaburg explains the artistic vision behind the furniture: “In the recycling industry, between the gathering and concentrating phase and the melting/grinding phase, is the inter-phase of compressing.  The objects compounding the cube become in a way autonomous and unique by the force of the compressing operation, and in contrast to the objects’ former life-cycle, in which they were similar, as part of the cube, each object has a different, incidental and uncontrollable form.  The new/old esthetic formed by the compressing action is controversial and even at times difficult to digest, since the memory of the object’s former function acts as a repellent.  In nowadays, in urban surroundings, the only nature that is available to us is an artificial one, one that is manufactured, like city gardens and traffic islands.  Waste has become an integral part of our modern lives, a kind of urban nature, and that is why it can be regarded as a raw material like any other.”

While the thought of industrial waste becoming a natural raw material in our modern urban worlds is a rather disturbing one, aesthetically speaking Zinaburg’s furniture is colorful, functional, and interesting.  With a strong point to make, of course.

And from an environmental point of view, compressing the aluminum cans in order to create the furniture is far less energy intensive than melding the material.

Zinaburg also creates sculptures out of compressed aluminum cans, such as the ones on the right.

Read more about other designers who use recyled materials::

Israeli Design PSA: Recycle and Recr(e)ate for Your Home with Lool 82

“Waste Lb” Design Company Encourages Lebanese to Waste Fewer Plastic Bags

Ten Sustainable Israeli Designers Who Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

Author: Karen Chernick

Much to the disappointment of her Moroccan grandmother, Karen became a vegetarian at the age of seven because of a heartfelt respect for other forms of life. She also began her journey to understand her surroundings and her impact on the environment. She even starting an elementary school Ecology Club and an environmental newsletter in the 3rd grade. (The proceeds of the newsletter went to non-profit environmental organizations, of course.) She now studies in New York. Karen can be reached at karen (at) greenprophet (dot) com.

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