Agar Plasticity Project Wins Lexus Design Award 2016

AGAR Plasticity is an innovative project that explores how agar or known as gelatinous material obtained from marine algae can be used as eco-friendly packaging material. It aims to reduce the use of plastic, as well as reducing plastic waste. Seaweed derived agar is traditionally consumed as food in Japan, but used in scientific and medical fields worldwide. It is usually sold in dry state, it has porous and feathery structure, very light despite its volume. Thanks to those features, AMAM Design Team (Kosuke Araki, Noriaki Maetani, and Akira Muraoka) has been exploring possibility to use agar as packaging material.

Goods are usually wrapped in plastic materials, but once unwrapped, that plastic is usually thrown to garbage or collected to be recycled. However, considering raw materials and energy for processing, this situation should be improved.

Designers : Kosuke Araki, Noriaki Maetani, and Akira Muraoka

Agar Plasticity Project by AMAM Design

Agar Plasticity Project by AMAM Design

Agar can be extracted by boiling specific kinds of red algae, then dehydrating the soup. It’s easy, but the result state also depends on the ways of dehydration and the types of red algae. To get a soft cushioning structure, it’s frozen, but for stiff film-like state, it’s compressed. Once a product is unwrapped, the packaging can be disposed in an environmentally friendly way.

Agar Plasticity Project by AMAM Design

Agar Plasticity Project by AMAM Design

Agar Plasticity Project by AMAM Design



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