We make and constantly re-make our surroundings using a great variety of highly processed materials. While renovating my 1980’s Berlin apartment, I was stunned by the resultant amount of waste and by the realization that I didn’t know what most of the materials consisted of, nor how or where they were produced. What was going to happen to all those half-used tubes of silicone and construction cut-offs? What was I going to do with it all?

It is increasingly common for architects, designers and artists, conscious of our impact on the planet, to see garbage as a resource, as cheap or even free material. Becoming sensitised to my own habits of consumption and daily production of waste, I make the detritus cubes out of my apartment’s mountain of battered parquet flooring and my own rubbish.

Though the detritus cubes comment on our culture of consumerism, mass-production and homogenisation, they are primarily intended to be fun, funny, surprising, beautiful and above all useful: from one-off experiments to unobtrusive yet richly textured multiples, they can be used as side tables, stools, shelves. Most are different on each face, inside and out, so the user determines which way is up.