Spazio Rossana Orlandi is a mecca for global design. The gallery is named after its eponymous director Rossana Orlandi, who’s been a passionate advocate for creatives across the ocean of her adult life. The Milan-based gallery has a long established reputation for launching emerging designers whose work is deeply reflective of the status quo and finds resonance outside of the scope of trend.
Long before the rest of the world caught on, Spazio Rossana Orlandi was curated to create a dialogue between the pieces within. Exhibiting emerging designers work in real-world vignettes, the gallery portrays the breadth of thought and skill that has contributed to their realisation and equals their aesthetic beauty.
Long renowned for her visionary capabilities in discovering and nurturing talented designers, Rossana extended her global presence within the design world even further by establishing the Guiltless Plastic initiative, a platform for the design world to rethink the re-use of plastic waste. Eminent works from an international roundup of individual designers and design studios have found a platform via the annual Ro Plastic Prize, which has become an integral part of the Salone del Mobile program.
Denmark’s contributions to the 2021 Ro Plastic Prize were represented by artist Hans Sandgren Jakobson whose work with up-cycled materials has resulted in exquisitely crafted furniture with timeless aesthetic appeal.
‘Crystal’ by 2021 Ro Plastic Prize finalist Engineering
‘Richard’ Chair by EcoBirdy. Image courtesy of EcoBirdy.
Guiltless Plastic
Established by Rossana Orlandi in 2018, Guiltless Plastic aims to re-align our collective relationship with plastic. Once revered as a revolutionary material, plastic’s longevity and economy saw it filter into everyday life at unprecedented levels in the mid-1950s. But, like any form of unsustainable manufacturing, the material’s low price point and indiscriminate accessibility meant a throwaway culture was quickly cemented. Now, well over half a century after its creation, plastic is cloaked in stigma as it continues to replace natural materials and overwhelm landfill around the world.
Guiltless Plastic has emerged with a two-fold philosophy that stands to remind us of the material’s profound innovation, validity and capacity for re-use while holding us all accountable for the unparalleled degree of waste and repetitive replacement that underlines the actual problem.
The Ro Plastic Prize
The Ro Plastic Prize is the international awards platform for Guiltless Plastic. It recognises the profound inroads being made each year by the design and creative community to fight against plastic waste. In galvanising the design industry, the intellectual and imaginative possibilities so far presented by entrants since the award’s inception in 2019 have proven invaluable to plastic’s environmental impact and inspirational for the future of its unparalleled prowess.
Plastic continues to revolutionise man-made products, and its capacity is slowly being highlighted for good through the pursuit of the design community and doyennes such as Rossana Orlandi.
Furniture collection made from recycled plastic waste found in public waterways by Italian Gruppo CAP, an entity responsible for maintaining public water service and demonstrating the capacity for a circular economy.
Stone bench by BCXSY and Laboratorio Morseletto
Ro Plastic Prize 2022:
Applications for the 2022 Ro Plastic Prize are now open until the 20th January 2022. Open to creatives from all countries, backgrounds, disciplines and ages. The prize continues the Guiltless Plastic ambition to end plastic waste through the vehicle of design.
‘Plastic Rivers’ by Álvaro Catalan De Ocón – winner of the Urban and Public Furniture Design category at the 2021 Ro Plastic Prize.
Rossana Orlandi by Eva Bauer
