Kingston University London

Overview

Jakki Dehn ran a furniture design and manufacturing business for twenty five years and she has exhibited and sold work world-wide. Full-time teaching at Kingston enabled her to undertake in-depth, international, research into sustainable design issues and in 2009 she offically launched the Rematerialise Sustainable Material Library (based upon research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council) at Kingston University. This is a unique sustainable materials library and online resource, suggesting innovative material solutions to the design industry which offer both economic benefits and less environmental impact.

This facility now houses over 1,200 sustainable material samples from 15 countries and holds information on products with recycled content from designers including Philippe Starck and Tom Dixon, showing that using materials made from waste makes business sense. Her students have in turn worked on collaborations with such big names as IKEA, The Prison Enterprise Services, Transport for London and Marks and Spencer.

"Almost everything we do creates something we throw away," she says.  "Once we found thrifty uses for used things. Now the easier option, when faced with something broken is to replace it rather than repair it. The result is more waste, bulging landfill; fewer natural resources and catastrophic environmental strain that makes us take stock of what we care about, what we value and what we discard. Increasing legislation now compels us to recycle our waste and yet we have little or no information about what happens to it when it leaves our doorstep."

Jakki is a 2006 independent assessor for the AHRC and throughout her career has taught in the UK, the USA and China. She has exhibited her furniture designs in the UK, France, Germany and the USA and curated student exhibitions in Milan and New York.