It’s often said that one person’s trash is another’s treasure. For Sydney-based designer and maker Marlo Lyda this guides her creative practice every day.
“I used to go to scrap yards as a 17-year-old and just play and tinker with little rusty objects,” she tells Broadsheet. “I remember sitting on the floor and there were hundreds of these cogs that I just placed into two-dimensional patterns.”
Since graduating from the Netherlands’ prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven in 2021, Lyda has found a way to articulate her attraction to waste matter, elevating it to functional art. “It’s a contemporary treasure hunt for material and it gives you such a sense of joy when you forage, seek out and put energy into finding and recovering materials rather than just purchasing new ones,” she says.
This creative process shines through in her Remnants collection, a series of coffee and side tables made from pieces of marble and stone found in the skip bin of a Sydney supplier – too small or “imperfect” for common use. Lyda gives the irregularly shaped stones (often from countries like Brazil, India and Iran) a new life atop scaffold-like steel frames bound together by copper wires. She has stock on hand but also accepts commissions for custom Remnants pieces – like longer coffee tables and console units.
In a similar vein, Lyda’s Shifting Mirrors series came to be when she noticed people were disposing of wooden furniture during lockdowns. Collecting the unwanted wooden objects – including several types of frames and chairs – she began experimenting with binding her finds with steel coils to create distorted shapes before burning the timber out. “There’s nothing quite like setting your work on fire, I have to say,” she laughs. “It’s one of the most thrilling things.”
Lyda says her experimental practice is about “respecting … that irregularities and imperfections are an essential part of all the materials [I work] with”. And when asked what inspires her, she says, “The materials themselves are almost enough … because there’s so much language embedded in them”.
The young designer was awarded the NSW Design (Early Career) Fellowship in 2023, which gives her a place as a design resident at the Powerhouse Museum and full access to its workshop and studio spaces. “It’s so liberating … [having] a fully kitted-out workshop only comes around once or twice a lifetime,” she says.
Her newest collection will be exhibited in May at Melbourne Design Week as part of Matters, an exhibition curated by Lyda and Melbourne-based artist Jordan Fleming. There’ll be a series of floor lamps, side tables and a bed, all giving “waste” new value and a new home.
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