Inspired by the design sensibilities of Brazil in the 1950s, an era of tropical modernism, Studio Swine‘s São Paulo Collection is a clean re-invigoration of this characteristic Brazilian style.
Swine has transformed waste materials from around the city into a luxury design collection. São Paulo is known in ‘scrap metal circles’ as the ‘Aluminium Capital’, collecting and recycling more cans than anywhere else in the world. Swine has explored the material’s potential through sand casting, with 1950s naturalistic details captured in the cactus coffee table and the contemporary abstracted palm pattern in the lounge chair.
Beverage bottles, heated and re-blown into an irregular collection of organic forms, are turning into lighting, a process far away from conventional recycling where the glass is broken down into cullet first. Reportedly, this results in a clearer, higher quality glass requiring less energy and retaining some mark of the previous industry that manufactured its form.
The São Paulo Collection was made for Coletivo Amor de Madre Gallery in Brazil with the support of Heineken.