crQlr Awards Exhibition TOKYO: New Relationship Design

INTRODUCING THE CRQLR AWARDS EXHIBITION: NEW RELATIONSHIP DESIGN

The crQlr (“Circular”) Awards 2023 gathered a record-breaking 140 entries from 43 different countries under the theme, “New Relationship Design”. For the 3rd edition of crQlr Awards, the FabCafe Global Prize was chaired by Kosuke Kinoshita (Marketing & Production at MTRL/FabCafe Kyoto). Under the theme of “New Relationship Design”, applicants were selected on the criteria: Contributing Value to the Local Community for the Next 100 Years, Positive Impact on Biodiversity, and Designing New Partnerships.

This exhibition represents a stepping stone to introduce the opportunities, insights and questions raised by the inspiring projects of the crQlr Awards winners. In addition to the Special Prize winners showcase, several Judge’s prize-winning works and a special collaborative menu by FabCafe x Sea Vegetable (FabCafe Global Prize winner) will be offered so the public can not only see, but also taste a more circular future.

Kelsie Stewart, crQlr Awards Chairman

The exhibition will offer a diverse range of programs including a showcase of crQlr Awards Winners at FabCafe Tokyo, talks and special tours by award winners and judges, a limited-time menu offered in collaboration with the crQlr Awards Winner, Sea Vegetable Company, and more!

Join us for a talk event with crQlr Judges Guillaume Charny-Brunet from SPACE10, Anni Korkman from Helsinki Design Week, Winner Yuichi Tomohiro from the joint venture company Sea Vegetable Yūkō, who is famous for collaborating with “noma” as a special award recipient, and more. We will be broadcasting the talk session online from the exhibition venue, so please be sure to join us.

To join the online event, please see the crQlr Summit 2024 TOKYO event page.

Guilty Flavours is a radical proposal for how humans can harness our own bodies as machines to eliminate plastic forever – by eating it. New biochemical processes like digestion enzymes could allow humans to safely consume plastic. Starting with vanillin, the molecule of vanilla flavour, this research project explores how we can realistically harness this process to create fully edible molecules transformed by living organisms. The result is the Guilty Flavor ice cream – the first real sample of food ever made containing an ingredient transformed from plastic waste.

URL: https://crqlr.com/crqlr-awards/2023/winners/guilty-flavours

Did you know there are more than 1,500 kinds of seaweeds in Japan, but only a few dozen of them are readily available to be eaten? Our company, Sea Vegetable, researches seaweed, which has been decreasing due to coastal burning. We aim to bring renewed interest to seaweed through environmentally friendly land-based and sea-based cultivation methods while proposing new ways of eating seaweed. Although plants traditionally cultivated on land have been thoroughly studied, with many cultivation techniques and cooking methods well-established, the world of seaweed is still in its infancy. We seek to preserve the seaweed-eating culture passed down from our ancestors while simultaneously creating a new culture around how we eat seaweed. Through our business, we strive for a brighter future for both the sea and people.

URL: https://crqlr.com/crqlr-awards/2023/winners/sea-vegetable-circulation/

After analyzing the overall forestry industry chain in Taiwan, the team discovered that the utilization rate of domestic timber is only 1%. Following visits to public sectors and schools, it was revealed that even though every year there is over 10 million tons of wood waste resulting from human pruning and natural winds, the wood is either sent directly to incinerators or processed inefficiently. In response, the team took on the role of bridging communication between various institutions and reconsidered how wood could be utilized based on the 7R zero-waste principle. The team then decided to establish the “REWOOD Forest Recycling Hukou Creation” system, designed to pass on the technology to the next generation of workstations, aiming to build a self-sufficient and complete forestry industry chain in Taiwan.

URL：https://crqlr.com/crqlr-awards/2023/winners/REWOOD/