Anne Valbak Christiansen

Reimagine Resources: a tactile introduction to the DIY material movement

About

Anne Valbak Christiansen

The aim of Reimagine Resources is to promote and inspire designers and design students to implement material exploration into their design process. 


This is done by in person exhibitions in which students, and other viewers, experience DIY bio-based materials first-hand. This allows them to explore the tactility and aesthetics of the materials. This is exciting as students often have only seen these materials virtually, where it is hard to get a sense of materials. 


An important part of the project is to give students and designers the autonomy to make and experiment with materials themselves. This is done by material booklets. Each material at the exhibition has a corresponding booklet available for browsing and for sale. The booklets come in three categories: Ceramics, Plastics, and Organics. Each booklet includes detailed recipes on how to prepare and make the material (supported by videos). 


Furthermore, the booklets go into detail about the mechanical and chemical properties, as well as price, time, difficulty etc. The material properties are crucial to the project as this information is not usually available in online recipes. The booklets are an expandable collection, and each booklet includes information on how to submit materials to the official Reimagine Resources library. Thus, encouraging students to experiment and help make the collected library their own as well as giving them an incentive to see the exhibition again.

Reimagine Resources: a tactile introduction to the DIY material movement

Several examples of materials of plaster and clay

Reimagine Resources is an immersive experience with tactile and digital features working in unison

Materials and products

Studio photos of my current materials and products

Material booklets

Here you can see the aesthetic of the material booklets both on the inside and outside

Potato Plastic making video

Early example of a making video for Potato Plastic

At the degree show, I will be selling the Reimagine Resources booklets with material recipes and mechanical properties, so please come along and buy some copies for your future projects!
If you are unable to come to the degree show, you are always welcome to contact me and we can figure out a solution. 

My Instagram account is in the link below and I will continue to update that as I move on to my Master's degree. If you are interested to see more projects from me please follow me on there. 
I am open to all questions or collaboration queries, so do not hesitate to get in contact if you are interested.

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