Reduce, reuse, redesign: A fresh take on recycling

It started as a source of self-gratification and ended up a celebration of sustainability.  ••  For this, our third Design Annual, we came up with a project that dovetailed nicely with the 20th anniversary of C-VILLE Weekly hitting the presses. We’d spent 2009 pondering the many ways we could illustrate our longevity, and one idea was to have a local designer create something cool from the old issues stacked in our archives—a paper monument to our monumental occasion. As our brainstorming sessions typically go, though, the idea for one grand gesture quickly skyrocketed into: “Why-not-have-three?” And the 2010 Design Annual Paper Chase Challenge was born. We selected a trio of local designers—an architect, a clothes designer and an interior design textile artist—offered each of them up to three standard bundles (50 issues a bundle) of old C-VILLEs. The paper should constitute at least 75 percent of their finished pieces, we instructed, and gave them three weeks to make them. They all took the challenge to showcase their skills, albeit with an unconventional material.
 ••  Then, we sought out other local designers specializing in recycled stuff. Among them, a flooring expert, glass designer, landscape architects and more—all, not only salvaging wasted resources, but also manipulating them into something unique.