Discarded and waste material are reused to produce something that is often better than the original or giving them a new purpose that is completely different from the one for which they were created.
Upcycling does not change the form of the original object, it simply reuses it in a new way. Some people call it salvage art. It not only conserves resources but blurs the lines between art, craft and design.
When I was in college in Mumbai with limited pocket money in hand, and a strong need and desire to find a sane, clean and beautiful space in a hostel room with two other roommates, I would often visit Chor bazaar one of the biggest flea markets in the city. There, I would pick up old lampshades, records, bottles, etc. And if I was lucky, some of the old Parsi shopkeepers would give away stuff for free! The result was that ours was the best room in the hostel and the secretary, after every Tuesday room-audit, would reward us with a 5 star chocolate. Soon other hostel mates began to request me to help them with their rooms.
Consumer waste contributes to 1.3 billion tons of CO2 emissions annually. Thankfully, there is a global movement of people reducing waste through reusing, up cycling and recycling and because of that upcycled art is having a revival.
Actually in our tradition and culture, our grandparents did not believe in throwing out things just because they were old or they got bored of it. They would reuse or pass the objects on to people who had a use for them. The secret is to go back to the origins and reuse everything.
What I create depends on what I find. I may pick up a broken fan from a junkyard or an old auto part. May be I can use parts of that fan or auto part to make a chair. It depends on the spur of the moment, on what I feel, how I see it and how it would fit into my house.
Someone asked me how I decided what I wanted to pick up and how I was going to use it? In my opinion, there is beauty in everything; we just don’t see its multiple dimensions.
There is a plethora of unexplored possibilities – you just have to tap it and figure out what and how you want to make use of it.
Any designer, during the design process, not only thinks of the utility aspect but the beauty aspect too of the product. Look at all the products that we use on a day-to-day basis like a fridge or a chair. We are spoilt for choice, from colours to even shapes. Think about the artist who saw the potential of designing a chair out a piece of wood when he first saw it.
He just picked up one of the many dimensions wood has. What you see in it is what you make of it.
If this wasn’t so there would be no other wooden objects or all chairs would have looked the same. How boring.
Upcycling for me is all about what I see in an object and which one of its many unexplored options I am going to tap and exploit.
Forty per cent of my flat interiors are made up of upcycled products.
The wonderful thing about upcycling is that random items can be reclaimed to serve entirely different purposes, from beanbags made with plastic bags, to rustic tables made from pallets or even old washing machine drums converted into lamps.
