Find Attached: Emerging Designers Rethink Sustainability in Berlin

A chair made from discarded fishing nets and a lamp made of sand and starch greet visitors at Berlin’s Schinkel Pavillon. The Find Attached exhibition features 24 emerging designers exploring sustainability through unconventional means. Opened on 10 October 2023 and running through 14 January 2024, the exhibition invites reflection on how materials and consumption shape the future of design.

Curated by Maike Timmermann, a designer and lecturer at the Berlin University of the Arts, the exhibition emphasizes experimentation. “Sustainability in design should encompass more than material choice,” Timmermann notes. “It’s about process, context and asking difficult questions.”

One question arises in Dutch designer Imke Rijnders's project, Reclaiming Waste. Her stools, made from shredded textiles sourced from factory offcuts, are compressed into modular forms without adhesives. Rijnders intentionally left visible imperfections to remind users of the material’s origin. Nearby, Korean designer Hyejin Lee presents Saltform, a series of translucent vessels crafted from crystallized salt and biodegradable resin. By using ephemeral materials, Lee challenges the expectation of permanence in industrial design.

Collaboration is another focus of the exhibition. The project Unseen Frequencies by Berlin duo Elias Grund and Pia Richter integrates discarded electronics with natural composites. Their wireless speaker prototypes feature housings made of locally sourced mycelium. Grund explained, “We wanted to show that mass production doesn’t have to equal uniformity,” during a panel discussion on 12 October.

As part of the exhibition, Timmermann collaborated with students to develop Circular Narratives, a series of workshops alongside the main installations. These workshops taught visitors practical repair and upcycling techniques. Participants brought broken items to learn how to mend or repurpose them, embodying the exhibition’s ethos of bridging theory and practice.

Another highlight comes from German-Peruvian designer Catalina Goicoechea, who transforms food industry by-products into wearable accessories. Her collection, Harvest Skin, uses discarded citrus peels to create leather-like textures. Goicoechea’s process involves drying, pressing, and dyeing the material with natural pigments. Displayed pieces allow visitors to inspect their intricate textures up close. Goicoechea described her work as “an ongoing negotiation between waste and utility.”

The exhibition space, originally designed by architect Richard Paulick in the 1960s, underscores the theme of repurposing. The Schinkel Pavillon’s glass walls and concrete structure remain largely unaltered, creating an intimate environment. Minimal, indirect lighting encourages viewers to focus on the textures and forms of the designs rather than their presentation.

This emphasis on substance over spectacle distinguishes Find Attached from larger, commercially driven design events. “Emerging voices are often overshadowed by established names,” Timmermann said. By centering these voices, the exhibition creates a platform for ideas that might otherwise remain unseen.

While the focus is on sustainability, the works avoid didacticism. They provoke questions about how and why we create objects. In a follow-up interview, Rijnders reflected, “We’re not just designing objects; we’re designing systems.”

Tickets are priced at €8.00 ($8.50 USD), with proceeds supporting further programming for emerging designers. The exhibition’s catalogue includes essays by noted scholars, including Dr. Laura Clarke, who examines the sociopolitical implications of material reuse. “Design is not neutral. Its choices resonate far beyond the object,” she writes in the opening essay.

The Find Attached exhibition illustrates that the future of design intertwines with sustainability and responsibility. These designers view the challenge as an opportunity. Their works suggest that merging creativity with ecological awareness may redefine the purpose of design.