By Máté Bikkes | April 25, 2024
We presented at Milan Design Week with Nieuwe Instituut
During Milan Design Week, Human Material Loop collaborated with Nieuwe Instituut to explore a simple question: can participation help turn concern about climate change into action?
Milan Design Week is one of the most important international gatherings for design, transforming the city each year through exhibitions, installations, talks and experiments across furniture, architecture, materials and culture. In 2024, more than 1,300 events took place across Milan, alongside Salone del Mobile, which attracted over 370,000 visitors.
Nieuwe Instituut is the Netherlands' national museum and institute for architecture, design and digital culture. Through exhibitions, research and international programmes, the institute explores how design can respond to major social and environmental questions.
Together, we created a pop-up hair salon where visitors could get a haircut and contribute their hair directly to the development of new textiles.
Against the backdrop of Milan Design Week, where thousands of new objects and materials are presented every year, we wanted to introduce a different proposition: instead of consuming something, could visitors contribute something?
People sat down, donated their hair, and became part of the material cycle. But what happened around the haircut was equally important.
Sometimes change can begin with something as simple as a haircut.
The salon became a space for conversations about climate change, materials, and the uncertainty many people feel about what meaningful individual action actually looks like. Rather than presenting another distant solution, the haircut offered something tangible.
Human hair is continuously generated and routinely discarded. By collecting it directly from people, we wanted to show how something considered waste can become a resource, while creating a direct connection between people and the materials they contribute.
The Milan experiment reminded us that circularity is not only about materials. It is also about creating opportunities for people to become participants rather than spectators.
