Sam Bird Smith is a graduate of Nottingham Trent University where he studied Furniture & Product Design. Sam now works as a lighting designer in London. As a designer, simplicity and sustainability are at the forefront of Sam’s values. He aspires to create products that are simple, reliable, high quality and environmentally friendly, placing particular focus on new, experimental materials and processes and how they might potentially replace more unsustainable methods.
INTERVIEW WITH SAM
Tell us about the inspiration behind your project.
Inspiration for the project came from a visit to the London Design Museum in January 2022. Here I attended the ‘Waste Age’ exhibition and found a small section on 3D printed algae-based bioplastics. I was instantly blown away and decided right there and then to explore this incredible material for my final year major project. I have always had a passion for lighting and it was a career I was considering going into after graduating, so I wanted to combine these two areas of personal interest into one project.
How did you come to work with your chosen natural material? What do you find makes natural materials so good to use in design?
Algae-based bioplastic is a very new and experimental material that isn’t yet widely available on the market. I managed to get a sample delivered from America and they put me in touch with a UK supplier. I was then able to get enough of the material to experiment with and create my product. I think what makes natural materials so great to work with is the excitement that these can potentially replace synthetic materials in the future.
What are your thoughts on natural materials & sustainability, and how do you think natural materials can adapt to a design industry increasingly focused on sustainability?
Every new design and every new product that is manufactured from now on needs to be sustainable in some way. Ideally the best way to reduce the environmental impact of the industry is to stop making products altogether, however we know this is not feasible. I believe that each new product simply has to be more sustainable than its predecessor.
It is impossible to completely eliminate all environmental impact and there is no perfect solution, but there are drastically better alternatives, such as using natural materials, that need to be more widely implemented immediately, to try and reduce this impact as quickly as possible. I remember learning a definition for sustainability in a Geography lesson years ago at school, that was something along the lines of ‘meeting the needs of the present, without compromising the needs of future generations’ and I’ve always thought that summed up the importance of sustainable design pretty well.
Tell us about how you’d like to evolve and continue your work with natural materials in the future.
Firstly I’d love to continue developing the design of Photo and hopefully one day get it on the market. If this did happen I would then like to push it further and develop a range, such as a floor lamp and desk light etc. This is something I briefly explored during the project at University, however it was the pendant light that took all my focus. If there is anyone out there who has seen my design and would be interested in helping take it forward onto the market then that would be also be great. Secondly, I’d like to have a job working as a designer for a company with sustainability at its heart. A company who would either be open to using natural materials or is already doing so.
Follow Sam on his socials:
Instagram: @sambirdsmithdesign
LinkedIn: @sambirdsmith
