Designer debris from Brodie Neill

By Simon Willis

This table is rubbish – or at least it was. Its smooth surface is inlaid with thousands of tiny fragments, carefully arranged by colour to achieve a fine gradation from white to dark blue fanning out from the centre. It looks like a contemporary take on a 19th-century specimen table made by a designer from an imperial nation and decorated with exotic wood or stone from all corners of the empire. It’s true that the material was gathered from around the world. But there is no marble or mahogany here. This table, called the Gyro, is made from recycled ocean plastic.

It’s the work of Brodie Neill, a Tasmanian furniture maker, and is Australia’s entry at the London Design Biennale, which runs at Somerset House until September 27th. Earlier this year Neill teamed up with a marine biologist at the University of Tasmania, Dr Jennifer Lavers, an expert in the environmental consequences of plastic pollution. It is estimated that there are as many as five trillion bits of plastic floating in the sea. Through an international network of beachcombers Neill began collecting debris washed up on shores from Tasmania to Hawaii, in order to make a piece of furniture which would highlight the environmental problem and encourage the idea that, far from being worthless garbage, the bottles and bags littering the tideline can be a valuable resource.