GreenWorks Collaborates with RISD Graduate Student

Group Makes Lamp from T-Shirts and Plastic Bags

Over the past few months, the GreenWorks studio has had the privilege of collaborating with Katryna Carter, a 2nd year RISD Graduate student in Industrial Design. Carter teamed up with five of our youth to introduce them to a 3D design process and develop a collaborative project to be marketed alongside other GreenWorks products. Together, they designed lamps made from a composite plastic material consisting of their reject t-shirts heat pressed between layers of used plastic shopping bags. After pressing, the flat plastic sheets were cut into an x-shaped module and snapped together to form various configurations of lamp shades. The lamps range in size from 8″ to 15″ diameter.

The material was created with a Kingston Press located on the campus of the Rhode Island School of Design. The machine is essentially two large irons whose faces are pressed together at pressures up to 1000 PSI. It was built by a class of Industrial Design students at RISD as part of the Waste-For-Life initiative which aims to create livelihood options for garbage collectors in Argentina. Carter’s project was an attempt to add a local context to the potential of the press.

Read more about the project on inhabitat.com.

Project Team:
Katryna Carter (RISD), Jasyn Agin (Riverzedge), Gabriel Silva (Riverzedge), Emily Henriott (Riverzedge), Time Howe (Riverzedge) and Manny Dubois (Riverzedge).