At Offsite, I visit the shop floor of factories and industrial sites, look at what is piling up in containers, and ask a simple question: What can this become if I treat it with respect? Our starting point is always an existing shape, not a preconceived product. We let the material speak first.
Meeting Hydro and the light pole offcuts
I first reached out to Hydro after seeing the work they were doing with designers. We invited them to our exhibition, then visited one of their plants to see what was actually available. We walked the line, handled pieces, and checked the consistency of the waste stream. In the beginning they even dropped material at my door, later we agreed on buying by the kilo since separating these pieces from production takes real effort. Availability and transparency matter if you want to do more than a one-off.
The project began with extruded aluminium offcuts from light pole production. The offcuts were generous in size and had a calm, structural geometry. I explored the sections without forcing them toward an object, then the use case revealed itself. Because the original part lived its first life in lighting, it felt honest to stay in that world. The slender profile wanted to hang, so it became a pendant. The more substantial profile needed the ground, so it became a floor lamp. Same origin, two attitudes.
Listening to the material
People often ask if I decide the product beforehand. I do not. I try to listen. If the material says “I want to become a lamp”, I design a lamp. There is a paradox here. I want the object to carry a trace of its past, but I also want it to stand on its own as a refined piece. The goal is to normalize waste, so the story is present for those who look for it, and the piece still feels complete for those who simply live with it.
Designing for scale
Working with waste should not mean making only one prototype. I look for partners with recurring waste streams so we can deliver at project scale, fifty lamps for a hotel, one hundred pieces for a fit-out, not just a single gallery piece. That is why material flow and repeatability guide my decisions as much as form.
How we collaborate with industry
Offsite is a design label built on collaboration with factories. I do not just buy leftovers. I sit with production teams to understand where we can add value and, when it makes sense, ask them to help manufacture the final piece. For this project we produced in our own workshop, because the large-scale machines that make the original extrusions are not suited to the finishing steps we needed. Every partnership is different, but the principle is the same, connect industrial capacity with design intent so waste becomes inventory.
What this method has taught me
Most of our pieces go to professional clients, interior architects, restaurants, and custom projects, often alongside exhibitions. This B2B focus allows us to match material flows with real-world quantities and timelines.
Beginning with waste is not a limitation, it is a design brief written by the factory floor. It asks me to notice, to accept constraints, and to answer with precision. With the Hydro light pole offcuts, the answer was two lamps that remember where they came from without being defined by it. If we keep building these bridges between industry and design, waste stops being a problem and becomes a practice.
