Cortiça
A collection of hand-crafted products developed to showcase the wonderful material; cork.
-
09-2024 [20 weeks]
-
Material exploration, Brand design, Market analysis, and more…
-
N. Wiffen, N. Jeevanath, D. Edixhoven
-
Business & Entrepreneurship, Creativity & Aesthetics, Technology & Realization, Users & Society
Integrating sustainability, wabi-sabi philosophy and craftmanship to create unique collection of wearables and accessories from cork
Material exploration, experiments and reflection on outcomes following a double-diamond framework
Objectives
The objectives of the team are to explore experience, aesthetics, sustainability and material properties in wearables. Cortiça has the aim of highlighting the sustainability advantages of cork and making those who come across it fall in love with cork.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
-
RESEARCH INSIGHTS -
The Lifecycle of Cork.
It is harvested from the bark of the cork oak trees without causing harm or cutting it down, and the cork regrows. The removal of the bark is also beneficial for the cork oak tree as it allows it to absorb carbon dioxide more efficiently. The cork regenerates and can be harvested every 9-12 years, making cork a renewable resource.
Material Exploration.
One of the main takeaways from our exploration was that we wanted to keep this recyclability as a main aspect of our final collection. This would be achieved by working with cork as a monomaterial.
Cork as a material encourages thoughtful, hands-on craftsmanship, where the imperfections are celebrated as part of its natural charm. This approach also fosters a deeper connection between the maker, the product and the user, promoting a culture of valuing handmade objects over mass production.
Cortiça – the Portuguese word meaning ‘cork’ was chosen as the name for the brand as a nod to the world’s largest producer of cork. Working by hand to create the prototype products for Cortiça gave the team an enhanced appreciation for the efforts, skill and time that a craftsman pours into a bespoke or hand-made product.
Final Design Outcomes
Expertise Areas
We designed a brand and business model around our design concept that truthfully and accurately portrayed our mission with the project. Competition analysis and market trends were analysed to give us a clear picture of what the industry standards were.
Business & Entrepreneurship
The interactive materiality of Cortiça and our wabi-sabi principles were at the very core of this project. We generated numerous ideas on how we could best capitalize on the material experiments we carried out with cork. Our final design was a collection of cork products that showcase the material and its raw, imperfect beauty.
Creativity & Aesthetics
We carried out a multitude of experiments using various techniques on cork to gain a deeper understanding of its material properties. This allowed us to evaluate the feasibility of the design concepts we were evaluating. We explored fabric manufacturing machines, heat, water and many more technologies for this project.
Technology & Realization
Cortiça is framed as an antithesis to the current world’s use-and-throw culture where something is thrown out as soon as it has a minor imperfection. We embraced the philosophy of wabi-sabi and finding beauty within imperfection just as it is in nature. The goal of our collection of projects is to celebrate imperfections and encourage our audience to think again before throwing something away that could be repaired.