Dutch design firm Studio ThusThat has developed a series of furniture and homeware that was cut from a single sheet of aluminium "crust" ? an offcut of the smelting process.
The collection, called One Side Sawn, includes flat-pack tables, shelves, cabinets, mirrors and desk accessories made using a byproduct from the early stages of aluminium production when huge blocks of the metal are formed in a smelter.
Studio ThusThat has turned aluminium scraps into furniture
Before the material is sent to other factories to be turned into products or packaging, the bumpy exterior of these blocks is sawn off, creating sheets known as crusts.
For the One Side Sawn project, Studio ThusThat decided to intercept and repurpose one of these large, thin sheets ? formally referred to as "six-sides sawn plates" as they are sawed off from all six sides of the aluminium block. Included in the collection are a series of shelves
The designers aimed to utilise one such sheet without producing any waste, which involved carefully mapping the cutting pattern in advance.
Each straight cut created a piece with a wavy edge, which then informed the shape of the following object. In this way, each item is made from offcuts from the previous pieces, thereby emphasising the project's core principle of limiting waste.
The pieces retain the offcut's bumpy surface texture
"The studio hopes in these pieces to explore a different aesthetic expectation of 'perfect' materials like aluminiu...