Long-term relationships between designers and clients are vital to creating sustainable design projects says design studio Formafantasma.
It is virtually impossible to create something truly green and ethical when clients commission one-off designs, said Italian design duo Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi, who make up Formafantasma.
"Companies don't realise that it's not enough to ask designers to be sustainable," Farresin told Dezeen.
"You need to allow the designer to work in a way that is different, is more realistic. And that's a different approach."
Sustainability requires long term relationships
Dezeen spoke to Formafantasma at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the duo designed the Baroque in Rome exhibition that will be taken apart and reused afterwards. "We took into consideration small changes that could be done to avoid waste," said Trimarchi. "But only with a long term collaboration with the institution could we make more long term and informed choices."
Instead of painting walls different colours, necessitating layers of repainting after the show, they used fabric that will be donated to schools afterwards.
The plain white walls will be used by the Rijksmuseum for the next two shows. But they pointed that they would have needed to be involved over a longer period to make the exhibition fully sustainable.
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