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If you build it, they will come, and if you take it down, someone will upcycle it—even movie screens. Designer Haneul Kim collaborated with Korean movie brand CGV to upcycle a movie screen into lamps and furniture.
“CGV has been collecting discarded screens for years and has been looking for a designer to solve this problem together,” Kim says.
He was inspired to create lamps out of the material when he realized that the holes in the white vinyl of a movie screen resembled industrial perforated aluminum plate. “And I imagined what it would be like to replace the sound emitted through it with light,” he says. “Waste movie screens are excellent materials that replace cloth or leather, and I think they can be used meaningfully in various areas.”
Such screens are typically taken down when they become dirty or damaged or a theater is closing or being renovated. Out of just one movie screen that was more than 10 meters (33 feet) wide, Kim created more than 100 table lamps, two tables, four chairs and four stools. The tabletop lamps, approximately 21 centimeters (8.3 inches) high and 14 centimeters (5.5 inches) in circumference, are being used in three CGV Premium theaters in Seoul and Busan, South Korea. Some pieces from the screen project have been sold to art collectors, but the project wasn’t intended to create a mass-produced product for the general public, just
to work on the waste diversion issue and sustainable design, he says.