After the Last Sip, a featured exhibition at London Design Festival 2026, explores transforming discarded coffee grounds and tea leaves into 3D printed interior design objects. The project conceived by Taiwanese designers Chao-Chun Kung, Ching-Yu Lin and Chen-Yang Chang, was developed at Fab.Pub in East London by combining dried coffee ground and tea waste with polylactic acid (PLA) to create a composite suitable for 3D printing. Through iterative experimentation, the designers explore how particle sizes and material ratios influence colour, texture, translucency and structural performance. Parametric design tools and robotic fabrication then turn these mixtures into complex, layered forms. The visible particles, irregular textures and the layered traces of 3D printing make the waste itself an integral part of the aesthetic, showcasing the origins of the pieces in an organic way.
Each designer develops a distinct response to the material. Kung’s CHA draws on Taiwanese tea-drinking traditions, incorporating the Chinese character for tea into its parametric design system. Lin’s Undetermined Shore uses coffee-ground composites to evoke Taiwan’s shifting coastline through sediment-like layers. Chang’s Nexus Bloom explores continuous, flowing geometries that suggest organic growth. After the Last Sip challenges the assumption that consumption marks the end of a material’s useful life, encouraging circular design practices for every day life.
