AaaM Architects (abbreviated from “Architecture as a Medium”) is an award-winning design and research studio founded in 2015, with a belief in architecture’s power as a medium with which all walks of life can engage and interact. The studio realises projects of master planning, architecture, interior and art installation design in Hong Kong, mainland China, Southeast Asia and abroad.

CARTON (RE)LUMINANCE

Shuyan Chan, Bob Pang and Kevin Siu are architects from AaaM, a research studio that explores the expression and communication of architectural designs in human relations as well as the cultural memory of their contexts. The three AaaM architects came up with a novel solid waste solution, thereby giving used Tetra Pak beverage cartons new lives. As this unique packaging material is lined with layers of aluminium, polyethylene and paper, it possesses numerous food-saving properties that also lend themselves to eye-catching, polymorphous and lightweight creations.

Here, they have made use of Tetra Pak’s foldability – which gives the ubiquitous beverage carton form – to build conical honeycombs by washing, flattening, folding and attaching discarded cartons. With the aluminium lining’s metallic, silvery-grey colour, the tree-like honeycombs have partial reflective surfaces like Christmas tree ornaments. Fitted with energy-efficient LED lighting, the structure glows and proudly preaches the virtue of upcycling over the holiday season.

In their new incarnation as sought-after decorations, the conical structures hang from the ceiling as lampshades and moderate lights. They encourage the public to rethink the over-consumption of single-use packaging materials. In the architects’ own words, Carton (Re)Luminance is not “a decorative end product, but a catalytic instrument in both material and ideological terms in the waste recycling process and education to achieve true sustainability”.