Urban and industrial remnants costantly recur in the work. Their incorporation becomes a tool to investigate on their ambiguous status, circulation and alternative possibilities to diminish the impact of the industry.
At the core of her practice lies an interest in daily repeated gestures and in process as a form of knowledge. This extends beyond objects into the design of shared workspaces. They are intendend as environments that support exchange and collaboration.
Realised in collaboration with sunday morning EKWC, Wetering, and Asbeter Holding.
Graduation project for Design Academy Eindhoven
© Benedetta Pompili 2021.
Researching on clay and extraction
It starts with the collection of wild clay from the river Maas. The employment of river clay has multiple sustainability aims. A gradual harvesting method allows the riverbanks to clean and regenerate, lowers the CO2 impact of the transportation, keeps the connections with regional colours, textures, and properties. River clay additionally urges to care for what goes dispersed into urban waters as clay absorbs and tracks the chemical contamination encompassing it.
The potter’s wheel as an inquiry tool
The wild clay was purposefully marbled with a white stoneware from Germany for behavioural durability and stability during making. The conversations on the potter’s wheel between the hand of the maker and the two clay types, takes body in an archive of hundred pots inspired by Jacoba jugs. Mirroring the nature of the two clays, Jacobas were traded from Germany, the origin of the stoneware, to the Netherlands, where the river clay came from. Due to shipwrecks, many Jacobas still lay down in the river bed. The inspiration from the archaeologic findings was thought as a way to tell the stories of the materials and highlight their geographical origins while crafting a shape to archive the process.
A potters’ saying suggests that, to start understanding the clay on the potter’s wheel, it is needed to throw at least one hundred pots. Hence, one hundred samples of conversations were led.
Treated asbestos as a filler
By collaborating with AC Minerals, a Rotterdam-based research centre treating asbestos-cement and turning it into silica, the last chapter of the research explores the application of the by-product of the treatment of asbestos as a filler in the clay. This uncommon grog, thought of as such for the first time, strenghtens the body of the clay while reducing the quantity of material needed. It in fact can substitute the 50% of the amount of clay needed. The material research was further materialised in a set of 450 wall tiles, configuring the architectural and insulating possibilities of the composition.