Petit Pas, French for small step, is a line of one-of-a-kind furniture and decor fabricated using found and discarded materials. Equal parts form and function, Petit Pas is the culmination of years of experimentation fueled by an innate desire to effect positive change. It pushes the boundaries of what we expect from the mundane materials that surround us — and it is always in motion.
After researching just how broken our recycling streams are, I felt inspired to uncover opportunities to repurpose and reinvent. We often hear about the horrors of plastic, but paper and cardboard are equally problematic — and many corporations are reaching for them as packaging alternatives, leading to a mass influx in our homes, trash cans, recycling bins, and landfills.
There are myriad nuances to the recyclability of paper products — for example: ‘paper’ coffee cups are actually lined with plastic, and therefore unable to be recycled because it is considered ‘too expensive’ and ‘too tedious’ to separate these materials, so off to the landfill or incinerator they go.
Petit Pas, as its name suggests, is taking a small step in the right direction. It serves as a mechanism to spread awareness of the issues within our recycling streams whilst inspiring ways to disrupt and reinvent. It is a tangible expression of hope that believes innovating around the ubiquitous can catalyze thought and action. This exploration also aims to democratize the fabrication process by affording those with limited resources the knowledge and inspiration to make a functional piece of furniture or decor simply by using what’s in their recycling bins.
Each piece is fully customizable — you can make it your own by adding more boxes, textures, tiles, or paint. The design process is never done. Further, almost all of the pieces (aside from those with tile) are made with organic supplementary materials for structure, including flour, water, and cornstarch, so once you’re ready to discard your piece, you can simply submerge it in water and turn it into paper pulp — et voilà, material to start anew!
