Is an upcycled furniture project where I am using broken plastic chairs from the streets and the beach to repair them using upcycled plastics like in some sort of kintsugi tradition. Broken pieces are secured with metal hot staples and missing parts replaced with blue plastic waste from the banana plantations at the west coast of Mexico.
Afterwards I prepare them by blocking a graphic pattern so when painted they get to resemble a faux architectural facade, such as a brick wall or a stone wall, being these popular and iconic vernacular motifs amongst self construction in Mexico. I intend to leave the blocked area with the original state condition of the chair, so it mantains a historic layer expressing its previous life, the new painting generates such contrast that makes it look “renewed” or I would rather say deliberated.
This project is complimentary to ongoing researches and works between new mexican folklorisms and upcycling standards designing. Our tradition of public space appropriation as well as customization are often referred in my work either conceptually as design typologies or formally as meta crossovers that are very present in our vernacular architectural repertoir.
It can be easily browsed at IG under the hashtags of #neofolklorismoconceptual for graphic urban references and #disenodeloinformal for more typological references, these are all ongoing research since 2009 approx.
The most recent research I started digging (since 2018) is this material research for upcycling standards for soft plastic waste which led me to found Bolsas Bolson, a startup where I design and produce from handbags to inflatable ephemeral spaces with a totally circular logic. I truly believe that waste material has an anthropological charge, making it our reflection and somehow a historical material we can use to curate and renew old discussions.
Norberto Miranda 
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