London's Aram Gallery is hosting an exhibition of products by young designers who are working with ordinary materials and processes in "extraordinary" ways (+ slideshow).
The exhibition, titled Extra Ordinary, features work from nine designers who are experimenting with finding new uses for waste materials and finding new ways to use industrial processes.
It includes David Steiner's Duct Work galvanised steel stools, Jorge Penadés's brass and scrap leather Structural Skin tables bound together with bone glue, and Lex Pott's rings made by drilling through 10 and 20 cent Euro coins titled Crown Jewels.
"All the designers selected for Extra Ordinary show incredible resourcefulness, imagination and daring," said curator Riya Patel. "They find new ways to look at the stuff that surrounds us."
Steiner's project is inspired by the craftsmanship employed in joining circular ducts to square ones in the manufacture of ventilation systems for large buildings.
This job is still done by specialists who pleat and spot-weld the galvanised steel to create a seamless connection.
Collaborating with these steel workers, Steiner created a collection of four galvanised-steel stools demonstrating the varying complexity of the joins.
"The series highlights a surprising element of craft embedded within an ordinary industrial process," said Patel. "Steiner's project lifts a common detail into a thing of inherent beauty."
Structural Skin by Jorge Penadés comprises two tables made of leather scraps bound with bone glue into multi-coloured structural batons, with polished leather joints and tabletops.
Inspired by the statistic that only 13 per cent of an animal's hide is used by high-end fashion, furniture, footwear and automotive companies, Penadés sought a use for what was left, saving it from being turned into fertiliser.
Lex Pott's Crown Jewels project aims to explore the notion of value now that coins are no longer made of silver or gold – material that was previously related directly to their worth.
Drilling holes into 10- and 20-cent Euro coins, leaving just the rims intact, turns them into jewellery. The 16-millimetre and 18-millimetre rings are made of "Nordic gold", an alloy of copper, aluminium, zinc and tin.
"It's a simple intervention that elevates the ordinary coin, something we walk around carrying every day, into a piece of strange jewellery," said Patel.
Other projects on show include bowls and sheet panels made of cotton yarn remnants by Krupka-Stieghan Studio, Luisa Kahlfeldt's collection of three seats made from corrugated cardboard, and a polystyrene sofa made with a hot-wire cutter by Martijn Rigters.
"The designers have all discovered surprising aesthetics, created structure from surface materials, invented new and sophisticated methods for recycling and intervened in existing paths for manufacture," said Patel. "Their work questions attitudes of value and beauty, and poses alternative directions for craft and industry."
The exhibition is open until 22 August 2015 at The Aram Gallery in London's Covent Garden. The gallery is part of The Aram Store, which was set up by Zeev Aram in 1964. Aram introduced the work of many legendary designers to the UK, including Marcel Breuer, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Le Corbusier and Eileen Grey.
The gallery was launched in 2002 to showcase experimental and new design. Extra Ordinary spotlights a growing movement among new designers, focused on seeking alternative approaches to materials and processes. Other recent examples include Laura Jungmann's unique objects made from re-blown industrial glass and Studio Swine's range of objects crafted from ocean plastic.