Library Hotel & Members Room. Saint Martins Lane, London.
During 2014 I was the Designer in Residence at 19Greek Street Gallery in Soho, London. As part of my commission with the gallery I developed a material waste lab in the premises of the gallery, where I created bespoke surfaces using glass waste.
This system was developed as part of my MA at the Royal College of Art in 2013 and was scaled up as a commercial enterprise as part of the gallery’s sustainability agenda.
My first commission was to create surfaces and furniture for The Library Hotel, a newly designed hotel and members room in the center of London, and only a few blocks away from the gallery.
The Waste Lab system was conceived to be a local system of glass collection, processing and use and this commission represented the perfect case study for the upscaling of the concept.
Glass was collected from the premises of the Library Hotel, transported to the gallery where it was cleaned and processed and then finally brought back to the hotel for manufacturing on site and installation.
To create the large structures for the bar tops, I constructed wooden molds for each of the sections and cast them separately to avoid shrinkage. Because of the nature of the molding process, each side of the walls from the bar tops had to be allowed to set before progressing to the next wall’s surface, so the casting process was slow.
Once all the sides of the part were set, the mold could be open to take the part out and begin the sanding and polishing process:
The parts were sanded and polished to reveal the shiny surface from the glass, creating a contrasting effect between the sparkle from the glass and the matte finish from the polished bio-resin.
Next I designed the tiles. In total I made a little over 2000 tiles to cover the surfaces form the bathrooms and kitchen areas.
Neals Yard loved the idea of using glass waste for bespoke surfaces and they sent over 150 blue glass bottles (discards from their factory) so I could create a more interesting palette of colours.
Once the tiles were finished, I continued to create table surfaces for the bar area of the members’ room. The molding process was very similar to the bar tops.
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