Designer Max Lamb and Potato Head turn the detritus of luxury tourism in Bali into furniture and objects of function and beauty
When Indonesian property developer Ronald Akili opened his first restaurant in Jakarta in 2009, he called it Potato Head. It was his way of differentiating it from the run-of-the-mill stylish eating in the city. For the initiated, the essential innocence of a Hasbro plastic toy from the 1950s would serve as a paradoxical signal of sophistication. Potato Head turned out to be the beginning of a hospitality brand that spread from Jakarta to become a resort in Seminyak on the island of Bali, and more recently a bar and restaurant complex in Singapore. Given Rem Koolhaas’ fondness for iconoclastic paradox, the founder of the Rotterdam-based architectural studio OMA was not an entirely surprising choice when Akili commissioned him to design the Potato Head hotel, which opened in Bali in 2020.
The Potato Head brand is based on a string of strikingly utopian promises. In the missionary prose of 21st-century marketing, it is based on “a zero-waste ecosystem where good times are reimagined as a catalyst for change – cultivating culture, restoring the Earth and nurturing community. Here, every element has purpose. Food and wellbeing nourish. Music connects. Art inspires. Circular design enables a regenerative way of life.”
We have become so inured to relentless greenwashing that it is hard not to be sceptical. But Potato Head is certainly in it for the long term. Since 2018 it has been working with Max Lamb, the London-based maker and designer, trying to find ways to reduce the negative impact of luxury tourism on the environment and on traditional communities. While OMA were working on the hotel, Lamb made the first of several visits to explore ways in which Potato Head could create a range of products and furniture to equip the building when it was ready. “At first I thought that I would design items, and source remote production. But when I went to see the site, I understood that there is a large craft capability on Bali. Building relationships with what is available was the way to go.” The island’s network of craft workshops might not be able to make a blow-moulded plastic chair or pay for aluminium extruding tools, but they do have the ability to work with a wide range of materials to produce distinctive products. Lamb produced an intriguing range of designs, but once all the bedrooms of the hotel had been furnished, it was clear that it could not be the end of the story. “Everything was high-level quality, and quite desirable. People stole things, which suggested that it was suitable for a homeware collection.”
The Wasted collection is a much larger project than the original range for the guest bedrooms. It was designed to harvest all the various waste streams from the hotel’s activities, and to use the detritus as a raw material that Balinese craftsmen can turn into homeware products designed by Lamb, for sale at the hotel and beyond.
Every year Potato Head, along with all the other luxury hotels in Bali, produces an apparently unstoppable flow of waste, from uneaten food to broken bottles, from single use plastic to cutlery and crockery. Both Akili and Lamb were acutely aware of the need to make something of this. “Bali is tourism-focused, the generation of waste is an island-wide issue,” says Lamb. “Potato Head is trying to capture waste. It has a sustainability director, and has worked with an outside agency that analysed all the waste streams: going through the statistics, seeing what was accumulating, and to understand what we could do with all of it.” Wasted products are based on eight distinct material families. One uses high-density polyethylene plastics; others are based on cooking oil residues, salvaged ceramics, broken glass, worn-out bed linen, composite waste materials such as polystyrene, and even oyster shells. “Most of the glassblowers source waste from construction sites and broken windows. Potato Head sends them their broken drinks bottles,” says Lamb.
“Bali is not really industrial, it is characterised by small village-based craftsmen; there are weavers, as well as a cluster of glass makers and blowers. They are all families, all multigenerational. It is large volume, but quite artisanal.”
Lamb saw his role as devising a range of products using the available materials that would make the most of the capabilities of Bali’s artisans. “My own experience as a maker with my own workshop was helpful. I wasn’t just a designer doing a design on paper, it was a collaboration with each individual maker, so that I could give them what they needed to be able to make pieces. On paper it’s easy to model but making in volume for retail can be very difficult. Each object is singular, they are all quite simple. It’s not high design, it’s not elaborate: it’s functional and humble. The detailing is intentionally minimal, it has been a process of collaboration respecting what they can make well, what they can make consistently. I am singular in my focus on materials. So, every piece is all made in a single workshop.”
The first Wasted collection includes marbled plastic chairs, hand-shaped ceramics and lounge seating. At the time of writing, Potato Head is now waiting to see the results of its launch in the summer of 2025. It’s also working with seven other hotels and restaurants on Bali to process their waste. For Lamb the key to the project is to be agile. “To achieve an equilibrium we must be nimble in our designs and production, we have to follow the waste stream. It is a finite and moving target. If product demand exceeds waste stream, we can’t just buy virgin materials.”
This article is taken from Port issue 37. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here
