DESIGN PROFILE

Fernando Laposse is one of the hottest names on the sustainable design scene

There’s a proliferation of pink in Mexican-born Fernando Laposse’s east London studio. Long trails of dyed sisal – hung like unicorn tails from drying racks – fill the space like candyfloss. Some of it is being used to create lamps that look like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family. Elsewhere, someone is flat-ironing corn husks out of which they’ll cut hexagonal shapes to create the equivalent of a veneered wallpaper.

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Fernando’s unique approach to sustainable design. Since graduating in product design from Central Saint Martins in 2011, Fernando has worked on his own projects, transforming ‘humble, natural materials, often considered waste, into refined design,’ he says. The backbone of his work is marrying natural materials with Mexican craftsmanship. ‘Mexico isn’t like Europe; it’s easier to hire a craftsman than have something industrially made,’ says Fernando, who exhibited at Future Heritage, Decorex’s platform for designer-makers in the UK last year. There, he showed his work using loofah as the padding for a screen, a sisal bench and panels of his ‘Totomoxtle’ veneer, made from flattened Mexican heirloom corn husks, used for wallpaper and tabletops. Fernando’s method is to work with ‘just one material, for at least two or three years, before putting out results’.

Working with artisans in Sahcabá, Yucatán, and using sisal – undyed or tinted agave fibres in natural hues such as pink (from cochineal beetles) – Fernando has created an immersive installation for citizenm hotel in Shoreditch and Pink Beasts, a similarly tactile piece at Design Miami/art Basel. It’s no surprise Fernando was named Eco Designer to Watch in our sister title Homes Gardensõ Design Awards last year but his work also aims for cultural sustainability. ‘I want to improve a community’s quality of life,’ he says. A designer with big ideas, Fernando was invited to speak at the Davos World Economic Forum in January. ‘I measure the success of my projects in the opportunity to tell the stories of the people we work with,’ he says.

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ABOVE Fernando in his studio, with cochineal-dyed bunches of sisal drying above him LEFT AND FAR LEFT Fernando’s lamps are made of undyed sisal or he uses dyed fibres to create more colourful designs

FAR LEFT The Mexican heirloom corn that Fernando uses in his work LEFT Veneer panels made from the corn can be incorporated into large screens or tabletops BELOW Fernando flattens the corn and cuts it into geometric shapes to create his unique veneer panels