Reincarnation

GREEN-HOUSE 2023 | Mercedes-Benz x TANCHEN Studio

When Waste Gets a Second Life

What does circular design look like when materials are taken just as they are? No disguising, no over-processing, no pretending they were something else. That was the question TANCHEN Studio brought to GREEN-HOUSE 2023, and the answer greeted every visitor at the stairway entrance of Castlery Flagship Store at Liat Towers.

The GREEN-HOUSE 2023 stairway entrance at Castlery Orchard, where Reincarnation greeted every visitor

The Installation

Commissioned jointly by GREEN-HOUSE and Mercedes-Benz Singapore, Reincarnation intercepted scrap materials on their way to the junkyard and gave them new form.

Three speculative furniture pieces, a one-seater lounge chair, a woven bench top, and a three-seater sofa, were placed on the steps outside Castlery's storefront.

Each was upholstered with surfaces designed and produced entirely from Mercedes-Benz scrap materials and Castlery's returned furniture pieces.

Reclaimed door handles components form the tessellated surface of a lounge piece

The surfaces told the story plainly. An exterior assemblage of tail lights. A tessellated panel made from car door handles. Woven black rubber V-belts stretched over waterproof outdoor seat pads. None of it was hidden. The nature of every material was the point. The shift in scale brought the idea home, quite literally.

Salvaged Mercedes-Benz tail lights and seatbelts line the frame of a sofa

More Than Material

Upcycled design and circular economy principles get talked about often. What Reincarnation did was make those ideas sit down and hold weight. The use of the steps as a gathering point was intentional. TANCHEN Studio wanted people to stop, react honestly, and talk. Do you like these new "textiles"? Would you use these materials differently? There are no wrong answers, only the conversation itself.

The indoor counterparts to Reincarnation, sized for the home and built using the same upcycling techniques and seatbelts

That conversation is one GREEN-HOUSE keeps coming back to. Every year, the festival brings together people who are asking similar questions, in different industries and from different starting points, and creates the conditions for those questions to meet. Reincarnation was one of those moments. If it stayed with you, that's exactly what it was designed to do.

Mercedes-Benz seatbelts, repurposed as the strapping for upcycled furniture