The Bartlett School Of Architecture Degree Project ' Deja-Brew' A Renaissance Coffee Lab -

Situated in Florence, 'Deja-Brew: A Renaissance Coffee Lab' re-inhabits the modern Italian coffee bar through an untold female trajectory. The project details how ten women produce innovative building materials from recycled coffee grounds, a material currently contributing 166 million kg to Italian landfill sites annually. Questioning and celebrating their societal role within the domestic sphere, they construct a high-tech experimental coffee lab. The kitchen, a space that was once a woman’s creative realm, has been transformed into a radical construction site: a sustainable, utopian alternative. Using the kitchen as a construction site, various coffee-based materials such as caffeine bricks and coffee bio-leather were produced.

The project evolved through the making of models and detailed biro drawings. The drawings show female workers on a building site; the laborious process of making the drawings acts as a metaphor for female labour outside of the household. This interplay between reality and speculation of alternative environmentalism allowed engagement with societal and architectural issues in a poetic way.