At Paris Design Week 2026, Latvian design collective Found Associations partnered with Kalve Coffee to transform a familiar café into a working laboratory for material exploration and circular design. The project explores how everyday consumption can generate the raw materials for new forms of making, transforming coffee by-products and other waste streams into opportunities for creative production. The exhibition connects four material experiments into a continuous system. Used coffee grounds are transformed into biochar and activated carbon, which is then used in a filtration system developed by Mārtiņš Mežulis to treat dirty water collected from a coffee machine.
Katrīna Tīna Smilga’s Milk Glue gives leftover foamed milk a second life. The milk is heated and acidified to separate curds, which are dried and milled into a powder that can function as a glue-like material. Combined with coffee grounds and filtered water by Līva Sakārne, it becomes a mouldable composite used to produce organic-shaped coffee trays. Some of these trays are incorporated into Kalve Coffee’s service, moving the experiment beyond the laboratory environment into commercial use. Artist Paula Punkstiņa further transforms dirty water into translucent, amber-toned decorative interior elements. Together, the series of experiments challenge the idea of waste, materiality and circular design as viable commercial solutions.
