Kartell makes greener use of plastics

05.12.09

However, mainly nonbiodegradable, plastics are hazardous to the environment. So, instead of being made into the throwaway objects destined for the landfill, plastics are increasingly being made into attractive, durable things.

Kartell, a modernist Italian plastics company that turns 60 this year, has always promoted yearn-lasting, collectible furniture. Its avant-garde tables, chairs and lamps by household names such as Philippe Starck, also muse about advances made in plastic technology.

Two new but nostalgic Kartell experiments marry the visual properties of metal and glass. The Cindy lamp, a '70s-style compliant lamp by Ferruccio Laviani with a teardrop base and conical shade, has a crisp, hard metallic chromium-like shine that is chemically "painted" on. The spectrum of finishes ranges from blue, green and red to shiny titanium.

Kartell's Dune, a semi-patent batch-dyed technopolymer thermoplastic serving tray by Mario Bellini, in a rainbow of colors, is the partnership's first foray into modern tableware. Colored plastics used for these molded trays are heated and cooled at unusual rates so that their molten dunelike waves are fixed permanently beneath the tray's clear, plane, glasslike surface.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle