The “After the Last Sip” project by Taiwanese designers Chao-Chun Kung, Ching-Yu Lin, and Chen-Yang Chang turns discarded coffee grounds and tea leaves into sculptural lighting fixtures. It started with the question, “What remains after a cup of tea or coffee has been consumed?”
The exhibition, with spatial curation by Chih-Han L, offers an alternative approach to repurposing these commercial waste products into functional elements. Instead of compost, they are transformed into large-scale 3D-printed objects, including lamps and structural art displays.
“After the Last Sip” used disposed tea leaves from London’s bubble tea shops and coffee grounds from local cafés. The team dried and ground the collected residues, then mixed them with PLA, a biodegradable polymer, to create a printable composite. Then Advanced parametric design tools and large-scale robotic 3D printing transform the materials into intricate lighting fixtures, sculptural objects, and furniture pieces.
The geometric design features distinctive layer-by-layer textures that highlight the fabrication process. The design expresses the “fusion of technology and ecology.” The Iced Tea Floor Lamp series and the ORBIT Modular Floor Lamp Series by Chao-Chun Kung are among the showpieces.
The Iced Tea lamp in the “After the Last Sip” series features a tea-inspired translucent color and the fractured geometry of ice. The tea-waste material softens the faceted surface when illuminated, bringing a warm, diffused glow to its slender column. Meanwhile, the ORBIT features rounded volumes inspired by planetary forms.
These volumes can be combined or rearranged into different configurations and heights. When illuminated, the coffee-ground PLA shifts from an earthy, speckled material into a warm, translucent surface. It gives the lamp an illusion of atmospheric lightness. The “After the Last Sip” exhibit runs Sept. 12-18 during the London Design Festival.
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Images courtesy of INNOVUS Lab
