Heat Pressure Lamination

Exhibition Design for NODE 13 – festival for digital arts and culture at the Frankfurter Kunstverein

Installation at NODE 13 by SAC Architecture and Performative Design

The design developed for NODE 13 is the result of a design competition among Architecture and Performative Design students, mentored by Mirco Becker.

Prototype for projector housing in light ceiling, Frankfurter Kunstverein

The competition was initiated and run by Meso, NODE and SAC and won by Moritz Rumpf and Sean Buttgieg. The winning project utilizes Heat-Pressure laminating techniques of recycled plastic bags to create and aggregate a modular polyhedron unit into what they call a “three dimensional spatial exploration and propagation through a binary-based guiding system.”

Plastic bags are widely used but hardly reused and often don’t find their way into the recycling chain. Their potential for upcycling seems to be limited due to their relative small size and tendency to tear or puncture. Laminating PE material sourced from used plastic bags has the potential to form a robust sheet material and as with any layered build-up fabrication technique leaves room for a wide range of forms with a comparatively minimal cost of formwork.

Along with developing the new material fabrication technology a strategy for sourcing sufficient used plastic bags became part of the challenge. A “fundraising” event was run at Kaiserpassge, where people were asked to bring their bag-full-of-bags and by donating it helped to lower the beer price of the night.

The project was installed on time and below budget and presented at NODE Festival in a Q&A Session with Max Wolf from Meso.

Moritz Rumpf developed the process as part of his ongoing research with the Architecture and Performative Design specialization and will continue the research towards its thesis project in summer 2013.