Tapæstry: food waste, served as tapas

The brief:

A group project: turn discarded food waste into new materials. The work was chosen for exhibition at Millenia Walk during Singapore Design Week.

My role: Project managed the group from concept to opening day. Set the curation style: materials served as tapas, plated as dishes with natural cutlery. Guided students across material groups to keep one story.

Tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, print production, hand-making.

The process: A group project turning discarded food waste, such as fruit peels, tea grounds and sawdust, into cement, resin, textile and metal composites. I was project manager, and also worked in the metal group, melting, texturing and weaving metal. I set how we showed the work: served as tapas, plated like dishes with natural cutlery.

The hard part: Leading classmates. There is no authority, only persuasion, and each material group wanted to tell its own story. The materials were unpredictable too, and many experiments failed. [We had to melt metal, so figuring out how we can do it in a school setting.

What I took from it: One clear idea holds a team together. The work was chosen for exhibition at Millenia Walk during Singapore Design Week.