NEW YEAR'S 2017 KALE CERAMICS
A! A Story of Upcycling from “Ne Hoş”: From the Kale Catalog to the New Year’s Forest
During the 2017 New Year’s season, we launched this installation in collaboration with Kale (Çanakkale Seramik, Kalebodur, Kalekim), one of Turkey’s long-established industrial companies. It is a very special upcycling project that blends sustainability awareness with artistic ingenuity. This process began when the brand entrusted us with hundreds of product catalogs—classified as “old” and past their useful life—rather than discarding them, and evolved into a creative transformation story that explored the potential of paper.
The Design Process and the Philosophy of “Upcycling”:
As the A! Ne Hoş team, we harnessed the structural strength and graphic potential of paper through design engineering in this project. The primary motivation behind our design was not merely to recycle catalogs destined for the trash, but to upcycle them—giving them a new purpose and artistic value far beyond their original intent. We shaped a total of 565 catalog pages by hand using a precise mathematical framework. Each page became a layered volume where the ceramic patterns and corporate colors from the catalog were transformed into graphic textures. By bringing these pages together, we created a symbolic New Year’s tree forest—emphasizing sustainability—that rises within Kale’s Fulya Store. The vibrant red stars at the top of the installation crowned the energy of this transformation and the spirit of the New Year.
Corporate Image and Sustainability:
Blending the power of visual merchandising with environmental responsibility in the worlds of retail and industrial design, this installation conveyed the brand’s eco-conscious corporate image to customers in the most tangible way possible. More than just a decorative object, this corner—which tells a “story of transformation”—became an inspiring focal point for store visitors. By channeling our design and production expertise into these types of eco-friendly projects, we continue to offer our partners in the construction, decoration, cosmetics, and luxury goods sectors bespoke and sustainable visual worlds through our design identity. Our goal is to create unforgettable, nature-friendly, and prestigious visual experiences within the urban fabric by repurposing even a brand’s waste with artistic ingenuity.
