As many of you might know, italians are very sensitive to rubbish issues.. Taking part to this competition we tried to find out a funny way to help solving a very serious problem we have here, enjoying ourselves.
Our main character is an industrial/well selling/low cost mattress, the kind of mattress people tend to buy to replace an old one (low cost items are often very good friends of consumption).
It's a 200x90x18 cm single mattress, with latex filling (85% natural, 15% synthetic), a very tiny silk and PLA layer as padding and cotton upholstery.
Latex filling represents more than the 80% of the whole mattress. It is reversible, quite rigid and can be considered as a block to be hollowed out.
Through a very simple production process (sterilizing - cutting - colouring - fixing), using industrial machines (sterilizer - industrial laser cutter), little recycled materials not coming from the mattress itself (a formaldehyde-free recycled plywood layer) and very little virgin materials (water-based non-toxic airbrush colours and glue) we could convert mattresses into kindergarten furniture: walls and galleries for children to play. While galleries come from the juxtaposition of latex layers, where holes change in order to create different spaces or to get air and light into the corridors, walls consist of single layers one after the other in a row. Shaping the cuts into animals (or fruit, letters, numbers), kids can play and learn at the same time, putting the right object into the right hole.
In both solutions removable parts can be used as pillows, short sitting spots and whatever children can turn them into.
The process guarantees repeatability and could be reproduced on a large scale. Unused materials (cotton, silk and PLA which is biodegradable) can be easily recycled.
