3D printed design objects exhibited at COP 15

Solaris Community is an initiative born in Sweden, with the same goals as #tide®: Raising awareness, creating a value chain and a circular economy at the same time. The Solaris Community  platform integrates partners that are upcycling plastic waste to bring more eco-innovations from the science labs to people's life. One of their main focuses is to connect artists and designers with technology and present the results in exhibitions before the prototypes eventually go into mass production. 

Despite the pandemic situation, our partners from Solaris Community have exhibited various times in the past months. Their efforts have been recognized by the United Nations ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) and their Closing the Loop program, which has amongst other things resulted in an Exhibition in Bangkok around the United Nation’s World Oceans Day.

Next stop is Kunming, China, where the UN Biodiversity Conference will convene governments from around the world to agree to a new set of goals for nature over the next decade through the Convention on Biological Diversity post-2020 framework process. The framework sets out an ambitious plan to implement broad-based action to bring about a transformation in society’s relationship with biodiversity and to ensure that, by 2050, the shared vision of living in harmony with nature is fulfilled.

The COP-15 Conference will also look at the implementation of the protocols of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that deal with the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of nature, and the safe transport, handling and labelling of Living Modified Organisms.

For this occasion, Solaris Community has also presented the work of designers who were encouraged to use the  Filament Creamelt® has developed together with the IWK and #tide.

Italian Fashion Designer Giulia Ber Tacchini is specialized in luxury accessories and innovative material research. In the past years she combined high quality Italian craftworks and the technology of 3D printing with the use of sustainable materials. Her installation Coral Pulse is made of our #tide ocean material. Plastic waste that – if not recycled – would have possibly killed the coral reefs, has been transformed into a filament and finally 3D printed objects that remind us of Coral reefs, the highest biodiversity on Earth. «They need light to grow. In other words, darkness is their “enemy”. Darkness also reflects the unconscious fears in my childhood: fear of the unknown animals. After growing up, I found myself always fascinated by the transparency of Jellyfish. This installation is about the contrast between light and darkness, fear and endorsement.”

Julia Bigerl, a designer from Austria, collaborated with Artist Hannes Erler to develop a system that shows simple technologies and principles, so every individual can make a positive contribution to the big problem of climate change.

“Our approach is to combine curved folding and printing of recycled polymers with the help of home appliances that are accessible to everyone.”

Julia Bigerl

On the other hand she wants to show how the addition of a new and pre-mature enabler technology like glass printing can be integrated within the vision of a circular lab that serves clients from regional areas, making them independent from global supply chains and their risks.

All the materials and components used in the design of her jewelry have had a previous life with us and have been reused, recycled and upgraded using the technologies already mentioned: Not only . So every material used has a new role in a fashion design oriented context and can also be reused afterwards.

For this reason, Julia Bigerl has used the Filament containing #tide ocean material for 3D printing on a layer of fabric from recycled cloth. The subtle yet complex form of the jewelry piece in 3D forming is generated by simply folding of the fabric. In collaboration with Swarovski's 3D printing glass technology, a Swarovski crystal made of recycled glass completes the design of each jewelry piece.