Designers Amandine Chhor and Aïssa Logerot have created a range of furniture and lighting woven from water hyacinths in Cambodia. Called Sur les Rivages, the project aims to find new applications for the traditional craft in order to use up the plant, which grows extremely quickly and is causing environmental problems. The designers worked with a local cooperative in Prek Toal, Cambodia, to develop the products.

The project proposes to revaluate the weaving craft of water hyacinth in Cambodia. This aquatic plant is harmful because it causes many environmental, sanitary and economic problems. Since 2006, 35 women from poor families in the village of Prek Toal have come together at the Saray cooperative to adopt the traditional craft of water hyacinth weaving. They have already manufactured a few products, enabling them to maintain their incomes. Working over a 3 months trial period, in collaboration with Osmose association and the women of Saray cooperative, the idea of this project was to experiment this organic material and the weaving techniques, in order to find new applications for the invasive plant. Cambodia, a country undergoing reconstruction, is trying to revive traditional crafts which have disappeared during the genocide. Here more than elsewhere, the design can help to upgrade some of these skills and become the link between technique, form and use.

Photographs by Amandine Chhor & Aïssa Logerot

Via Dezeen