Bee’ah, a Middle East’s integrated environmental management company based in Sharjah, recently commissioned two UAE-based design teams, Kalo and Architecture + Other Things to explore the full potential of using its locally recycled rubber crumbs to develop furniture collections.
Bee’ah’s tyre recycling facility, located within the company’s waste management centre at Al Saja-a, currently uses state-of-the-art cryogenic processes to recycle over 9,000 used tyres into crumb rubber on a daily basis. The recycling of millions of tyres avoids wasting land space and prevents fire hazards. Bee’ah then produces different size ranges of crumb rubber, which are used for running tracks, playgrounds, landscaping paths, stadium play areas, miniature golf courses, and artificial turf infill. When combined with asphalt, it can also be used for rubberised roads.
With the intention to improve the value of the resource rather than simply reuse it, these projects are the latest in a series of explorations Bee’ah has embarked on to explore additional ways to upcycle rubber waste.
In a collaborative work environment, the two teams bolstered each other’s core strength and developed a collective understanding of the unusual, recycled material at hand. With their vision, the rubber crumb that Bee’ah transforms into usable products such as floor tiles now stands re-imagined as two distinct design collections. Diverse in their approach, methodology and the final results, these works mark a new world of possibilities – one where institutionalised recycling need no longer mean a glorified stop on the way to the landfill.
Macaron Seats by Kalo
Kalo is an architecture and design studio founded by the awarding winner designer Ammar Kalo. With concentrations in digital technologies and material systems, the studio researches new fabrication processes including the use of industrial robotic arms.
Kalo’s approach to designing a series of work with recycled crumb rubber was to utilise a similar industrial technique Bee’ah uses to make rubber pavement tiles. Each Macaron seat is made by pressing a two part mould onto a pre-made wood frame. Macaron Seat’s main visual characteristics are chamfered smooth surfaces, rounded off edges, and their distinct fuzzy centre.
The seat’s legs jet out of the rubber mass and fold towards the ground, while also leaving an X-shaped silhouette print on the seat’s bottom surface, as if the solid rubber stretched to accommodate the wooden legs. The parting line been the molds is exaggerated by allowing some room for overflow rubber, which creates a solid rim around the seat. Once the pieces are de-molded, this rim is ripped off, resulting in a rough edge to the seat, contrasting the smooth seat surfaces. Inlaid within, is a thin brass element that adds to the tension and visual juxtaposition. Also, mixed in with the rubber crumb are wood shavings created during the process of making the wooden legs, giving the rubber seats a contrasting speckled look.
Earth by Architecture + Other Things
On the back of its founding members Faysal Tabbarah, Khawla Al Hashimi and Nada Taryam, the collaborative and interdisciplinary platform that is Architecture + Other Things, straddles architecture, design education and project management to explore alternative models of architectural practice and design.
Approaching design as a holistic condition, Architecture + Other Things deploys technology to produce work at multiple scales and within multiple disciplines that reflect novel solutions in the design and production of architecture and all other things.
Earth is the latest in a series of objects that make up team’s ongoing research agenda, Almost Natural Things. This agenda explores the role of the Anthropocene in the production and aesthetics of architecture and design. The objects within the Earth series are designed and fabricated entirely from Bee’ah’s recycled rubber tyre crumbs through a juxtaposition of precise manufacturing techniques with non-linear casting operations.
