TRASHFORMERS | Savvas Laz
TRASHFORMERS

Trashformers propose a punchy and positive vision for our apocalyptic times. These sculptural designs speak of the misled legacy of the 20th century through their non-biodegradable found materials – taking it and transmuting it by embodying the current century’s potential for a distributed rescue mission through acts of re-imagining and gestures of re-construction. With their Lego- inspired silhouettes and palette, these pieces introduce a confident character and uplifting energy, bringing contrast to domestic environments, and synthesis to architectural spaces.

Every Trashformer is a unique one-off, hand made by Laz in his Athens studio through a layered process on compilation, fortification, and finishing. Starting from a selection of discarded polystyrene packing crates he gathers from the streets, each object is formed through a fragment-by-fragment collage bound to reflect its aggregate composition. In this way, whether a chair, table, lamp, mirror, or bench, as each new design emerges in Laz’s hands, it carries forward the stories of its contributing fragments’ pasts.

Trashformers can be understood within the Postmodernist canon of Adhocism, articulated by architectural theorist Charles Jencks, and practiced by designers Ron Arad and Nigel Coates – among many others through the half-century since they introduced it as a radical solutions-led practice for re-shaping the built environment. Often characterised by a narrative design language that uses patina and signification to communicate its values of manual experimentalism and adaptive

re-use, Trashformers continues Adhocism’s tendency towards future-primitive aesthetics that celebrate the honest and unpolished – to which Laz adds a super-contemporary feel through his exuberant approach to surface and colour. External textured micro-landscapes of fibreglass often meet reflective mirror, sheer glass, or luminous striplights, which combine with the chunky packing- crate forms enveloped within to deliver a powerful object charisma.

 

Text by Kasia Maciejowska