Flokk sustainable acoustic solution shortlisted for 2020 Dezeen Design Award

In 2017, Italian/Hungarian industrial designer Andrea Ruggiero was invited to experiment in the Offecct Lab in order to find a way of turning waste material into a high performing commercial product.

Making a commercial product with leftover materials is easy to say but hard to do. However, after deep discussions and elaborate workshops with Andrea Ruggiero, a design and a method were developed that not only ensured a sustainable product, but also a product that could add something new and relevant to the acoustic segment. Soundsticks® consists of textile scraps from upholstery production, which is moulded into the shape of a tube, held together at the ends by recycled aluminium caps. These textile “sticks” hang from rails in linear or radial shapes that can be combined depending on need and space.

“This project evolved through many discussions and various attempts at exploring new ways of addressing acoustics in today’s environments. Soundsticks® is an innovative room dividing concept that helps reduce ambient noise in public spaces or open plan workspaces”, says Andrea Ruggiero.

To ensure the availability of qualitative fabrics to Soundsticks®, Offecct collaborate with Flokk’s other production units on the availability of materials. The availability of fabric leftovers decides the colours, the structure and the volumes.

A Sustainable Story

Soundsticks® is a unique product in several respects:

• The upholstery is fabric leftovers from Offecct and Flokk’s furniture production, assembled with a zipper.
• The fabric leftovers are sorted in four colours; grey, blue, green and red. This means that you only can choose colour scale and not determine exact colours. Everything depends on the availability in our stock of fabric leftovers.
• Soundsticks® contain a sound-absorbing material made of recycled textile and PET.
• The product is completely without glue.
• The bottom and top have plates of recycled aluminium.

You balance the sound in the environment by adjusting the number of Soundsticks® and the round shape of the sticks gives privacy while also allowing light to trickle through. By randomly combining sticks of different colours in the same nuance, a subtle and captivating camouflage pattern emerges and Soundsticks® reminds us of how beautiful recycling can be.

“We must all start to re-think and re-use the resources on earth. For us, that means that you can only own the design and function, never the materials, the materials we use are on loan from nature. Therefore I am so glad that we managed to bring Soundsticks® from an idea into a commercial product,” says Offecct's design manager Anders Englund.

Read - Nordea’s ‘Less Waste Office’ a new benchmark in sustainable design

Dezeen Design Awards 2020

Offecct Soundsticks® by Andrea Ruggiero Design is one of five products shortlisted in the Workplace Design category of the Dezeen Design Awards 2020. A further round of judging by their master jury will determine the winner, which will be announced in late October.

Click here to visit full awards shortlist page.