‘Can City’ Shows Us the Future of Sustainable Design

Studio Swine is a design, architectural and product team made up of Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves. The two of them have created a body of design work with a strong emphasis on sustainable design and exploratory new materials and production systems. Murakami and Groves take problems and make them into stunning solutions. In this video, they’ve taken aluminum cans from the streets of São Paulo, Brazil, melted them down and created sustainably designed furniture. The finished chairs are beautiful and simple, and the entire project emphasizes that this is the way of the future for quality design. It’s simple in concept, and rich in the environmental and industrial potential it provides for burgeoning cities with an excess in aluminum garbage. But please don’t try melting down aluminum cans at home, that is dangerous and the fumes from burnt metal are vile.