Fields by Daniel Rybakken
Following the success of their 2024 exhibition “100R” at Milan Design Week, Hydro returned to Capsule Plaza with yet another ambitious project. After launching the world’s first 100% post-consumer aluminium last year, the company shifts its attention to transportation, attempting to reduce their total carbon footprint even further as Hydro CIRCAL 100R aluminium goes from material to final product.
For the fittingly named “R100” project, Hydro challenges itself to bring to life new works from designers Sabine Marcelis, Keiji Takeuchi, Cecilie Manz, Daniel Rybakken and Stefan Diez within a self- imposed limit of a 100 km radius – from locally sourced post-consumer scrap to finished design objects.
Rør by Cecilie Manz
Celebrating the launch of Hydro CIRCAL 100R in Milan in 2024, with its record low carbon content below 0.5 kilo CO2e per kilo aluminium, represented a major milestone for the Norwegian company. For R100 Art Director Lars Beller Fjetland, the idea for R100 began to form during last year’s exhibition in Milan.
– The idea of containing the entire project within a 100 km radius came to me just days after opening the 100R exhibition. Could it be possible to solve all operations from scrap collection, casting, extruding, machining and anodizing within such a small area, creating five bold new designs from 100% post-consumer-based aluminum?
Profil outdoor chair by Keiji Takeuchi
Orbit Light by Sabine Marcelis
– I saw that there were gains to be made by examining every tiny part of the transportation component of the project with the same emission-obsessed mindset as Hydro approaches the material itself, says Beller Fjetland.
– We don’t do these projects because they are easy, we do them because they are hard, he adds, paraphrasing John F. Kennedy’s famous moon landing quote.
BOSS recycling bin by Stefan Diez
The R100 designers – all blissfully unaware of the 100 km production radius when designing – were offered complete freedom by Hydro, with no limitations to extrusion press size, product size or product typology.
– We wanted to make sure that the project mirrors a real-life use-case, where a designer or manufacturer gets access to everything Hydro can offer, from design support to production processes, says Asle Forsbak, Director of Marketing and Communications at Hydro Extrusions.
The project, which officially began with the harvesting of 52 tons of locally sourced aluminium scrap from demolished greenhouses and decommissioned light poles in the Netherlands in November last year, involved a range of Hydro plants in the Benelux region, bringing each object to life within a 100 km radius.
– This is urban mining put into practice, says Forsbak. Working with small manufacturing clusters, which is not unique to R100 but typical for how Hydro works with our customers, allows for full traceability of material, from scrap to final product.
Fields by Daniel Rybakken
• Orbit Light by Sabine Marcelis
• Profil outdoor chair by Keiji Takeuchi
• Rør by Cecilie Manz
• Fields by Daniel Rybakken
• BOSS recycling bin by Stefan Diez
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