Showcase 2022 Student Spotlight: Fred Owen

A Material Exploration Project: Polynewton by Fred Owen

BA (Hons) Product Design

The project aim is to explore how waste can be recycled into a raw material of the future.

By documenting this process, the project hopes to highlight the negative impact of excessive consumption to those less aware of society’s throw away culture.

Using wastepaper cups, pulled straight from the bins of NTU’s Newton and Arkwright buildings as well as using a natural binder – dehydrated egg white, the ‘new’ material aims to make the university and the public more curious about the future of consumption.

By using material design as a conveyor of meaning, it could help change the way society thinks about the lateral waste stream.

Fred Owen, creator, said: “As a material exploration project, it is particularly research-heavy. These research elements include investigations into accessible waste streams to use for the base material, along with research into binders and fabrication processes.

"The physical material experimentation and the potential application of the material outcome is largely driven by the successes or failures of the iterative process. In other words, it can be difficult to anticipate exactly what the resulting application or outcome will be for the material. But that’s the fun part - a lot of it is informed guesswork.”

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