PENADES

This project does not start from an interest in the advantages of a material, but from its disadvantages. Leather is a beautiful material but very inefficient in terms of its manufacturing process due to its natural origins. No matter which tanning process a hide went through, the quality of a piece of leather depends directly on the part of the animal that comes from. The higher the movement, the lower the quality; some experts indicate that just the 13% of a hide is top quality and up to the 43% is considered good quality. This fact means that companies involved in the production of leather goods produce a large amount of discarded materials, leftovers and offcuts.

After an extensive material investigation, I designed a new production method that transforms leather waste into an innovative material that is made 100% from an animal source. Any resin or chemical component has been used along the production, carefully considering the environmental impact of the project.

The result is Structural Skin, a material-based experimental project that celebrates the inherent qualities of given skins while defining a new role for leather that had not been previously considered. The strong material language and its visual qualities have been harnessed in different objects, created to emphasize the material’s capabilities beyond the common two-dimensional expressions of leather.