Designers experimented with unusual materials throughout 2018, from innovative new products to waste. Design editor Augusta Pownall picks out 10 of the best for our review of the year.

Pipes
PVC plumbing pipes are about the least sexy material possible to imagine, but some designers this year were able to look beyond that.
Japanese designer Kodai Iwamoto applied the processes of glassblowing to heated plastic pipes to create delicate, undulating forms.
Lucas Muñoz used ventilation pipes for a series of pieces of furniture, whilst Christophe Machet and Phan Thao Dang both used sewage pipes to make vividly different collections of seating.

Salt
Sodium chloride has long been used for flavouring food, but this year designers such as Erez Nevi Pana and Lindsey Adelman used salt in their work. Pana took waste materials, bound them together and dipped the resulting "stool" into the Dead Sea. After a few months, the surface was coated in salt crystals.
Adelman collaborated on a show at Milan design week, in which she showed versions of her brass Drop lighting system corroded with salt.

Graphene
Graphene has a host of qualities – it is thin, strong, transparent, dense, a good conductor of electricity, the list goes on. Little wonder that designers applied the single layer of carbon to a wide range of projects this year.
Vollebak's jacket acts as a radiator insulating the wearer. Meanwhile a wheelchair made from the material is incredibly light.
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