SMOGWARE

2017-2023
Photo credit tableware: Servies I Roel van Tour
More on Smogware and Iris de Kievith

Architect Iris de Kievith and designer Annemarie Piscaer initiated the project Smogware. The Smogware tableware represents local air quality. The air quality is not good. Every day we inhale soot, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter unnoticed, of which we are the producers ourselves. Iris and Annemarie found a way to harvest particulate matter and use it to stain a glaze for a ceramic tableware. With the colour that the particulate matter gives, the poor air quality becomes visible, and even tangible. Part of the project is the ‘participative urban mining’; people in different cities can participate in the harvesting of the dust in the Netherlands and abroad. After all, the wind blows the dust everywhere.

The glaze shows the average a person breaths in a certain period of time in a city.  These fine dust particles are used for a glaze for a tableware that consists of 6 pieces. All the pieces are created in 5 colors, depending of the amount of dust that is used in the glaze, resulting in a peculiar matrix of data. The glaze itself shows the DNA of a city, like more sand in the air due to the cities location near a desert (Gobi desert for example in Beijing) or sea (like Rotterdam) give a translucency. Or more metals create a mat blackness for example, like in Wijk aan Zee located near a steal factory.

The conversations that happen on the streets whilst harvesting the dust, or during the serving of food from the tableware could be considered as a designed moment to share ‘soft data’. Personal stories of what the air means to someone.

Smogware has more than 150 publications in various media, and has thus been able to tell the story. It has been exhibited internationally and bought by various musea.
More can be read here: https://smogware.org/

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