Designers experimented with unusual materials throughout 2018, from innovative new products to waste. Design editor Augusta Pownall picks out 10 of the best for Dezeen’s review of the year.

 

1. Pipes

PVC plumbing pipes are about the least sexy material possible to imagine, but some designers this year were able to look beyond that

 

2. Salt

Sodium chloride has long been used for flavouring food, but this year designers such as Erez Nevi Pana and Lindsey Adelman used salt in their work.

 

3. Graphene

Graphene has a host of qualities – it is thin, strong, transparent, dense, a good conductor of electricity, the list goes on. Little wonder that designers applied the single layer of carbon to a wide range of projects this year.

 

4. Concrete

In August we discovered that carrots could be the key to making stronger concrete, putting the most basic of all building materials back on the agenda.

 

5. Brainwaves

Designers played with our minds in 2018, by using electroencephalography (EEG) receptors to read signals from the brain.

 

6. Human waste

If there's one material we're not in danger of running out of it's human waste.Hair from the floor of a local hairdresser was one ingredient in Ellie Birkhead's bricks made from a variety of waste products. Oskana Bondar also used the stuff to make a stool.

 

7. Fur

Real fur fell out of fashion this year, literally and figuratively. Stella McCartney was one of the catwalk queens cheering the fact that September's London Fashion Week featured no real fur on its runways.

 

8. Food waste

Making tableware to eat your food off from food waste, as Tokyo-based designer Kosuke Araki did with his Anima collection of cups, plates and bowls this year, is one thing. Making new treats with the stuff is quite another.

 

9. Bioplastic

Ocean plastic hit the mainstream in 2018, with many designers creating projects using plastic taken out of the seas, but bioplastic could offer a long-term solution to the problem of single-use plastics.

 

10. Photovoltaic surfaces

Solar panels were integrated into projects in interesting ways this year. Heliafilm was applied over a building in Lyon as part of a research project that the team plan to market in 2019, whilst Apple covered the entire roof of its new Cupertino headquarters with panels.

Source: https://www.dezeen.com/2018/12/17/top-10-innovative-materials-2018-review/