Surface Design Show 2022 Highlights

This year the Interior Design team at Three Rooms Design visited the Surface Design Show at the London Business Design Centre. 2022’s exhibition theme focused on interior design sustainability, looking directly at the supply chain of materials and their impact on the environment.

As a company with a keen focus on sustainability within the design process, it was an important opportunity to discover new innovative products and foster our growing network of material suppliers in order to offer the most environmentally options for our clients’ interior designs.

Amongst the many different companies showcasing their products, our Three Rooms Design team chose a few that we believe highlight the forefront of innovative and sustainable materials.

Organoid

Organoid is an Austrian born surface finish company, specialising in interior surface finishes created from plant-based natural materials.

The award-winning company’s mission:

“Through the use of untreated natural plant parts, which have largely retained their original appearance, feel and fragrance during our production processes, we are able to bring the outdoors into interior spaces as well as the fresh smells and positive associations of nature.”

Organoid surface materials are designed to be used for a variety of interior design purposes including wallpaper, flooring and even interior furniture. The natural texture of Organoid’s products is a key feature of their design, as it encourages a haptic experience with the material surface, and a connection back to nature.

Smile Plastics

Based in Swansea, Smile Plastics caught our attention with the beautiful display of their future-proofed and sustainable post-consumer plastic material range.

Here’s what they have to say about their innovative company:

“We design sustainable materials made from “waste” plastics collected from a variety of post-consumer and post-industrial sources. We believe that our reimagined, recycled materials match any new ones that you’ll find in terms of quality and style. Each panel is entirely crafted by hand and has its own unique identity.” - Smile Plastics

Plastic, specifically single-use plastic has no place in our idealistic sustainable future in design, unless we change the narrative. Plastic, with a carefully controlled life-cycle and intentional production process, can be one of the most versatile and sustainable materials on the planet. Single-use plastic however, as we all know, causes gargantuan amounts of waste and pollution, whether in land or in our oceans. Smile Plastics have taken this increasing problem and turned it into an innovative material solution. By recycling post-consumer and post-industrial plastic waste, and turning it into a new material, many of the qualities and benefits of plastic are retained without adding to the already mounting concern over plastic waste. That’s the kind of design thinking that needs to forge the way when it comes to sustainable interiors.

The panel discussions on the main stage at the Surface Design Show highlighted the importance of the role that Interior Designer’s have in protecting the environment throughout their design choices.

The climate crisis is becoming increasingly prominent in all sectors of design, and with the design and construction industry being one of the sectors with the largest impact on the environment, now is the time to act in order to reduce that impact.

Within the design industry, at each level of profession, there needs to be shift in our thinking. For interior designers, our material and product specification must be guided by its life-cycle and environmental repercussions. How is the product sourced? How is it produced or refined? How is it delivered? What happens at the end of its life?

Here at Three Rooms Design, these questions form the basis of our guiding principles, because after all, the planet is our first, and most beautifully designed home.

To see more information about the sustainability panel and Surface Design Show:

Why sustainable interiors matter and how we plan to transform the industry - Interior Design Declares in discussion.