Multidisciplinary design studio Spared announces its participation at Clerkenwell Design Week 2026, with a display exploring how waste materials can be transformed into furniture and interior objects that are functional, expressive, and rooted in craft.

Founded in 2021 by Callie Tedder-Hares and Emma Lally, Spared has partnered with brands, architects, and cultural institutions to reimagine everything from oyster shells and coffee grinds to bottle tops and masonry waste into bespoke furniture, interior objects and installations. The studio was built on a shared ambition to show that reclaimed materials can sit comfortably within refined, design-led environments. Balancing circularity, transparency, and experimentation, Spared embeds story and craft into every piece, extending the life of materials that would otherwise end up in landfill.

For Clerkenwell Design Week 2026, Spared will present a display of recent commissions for Tate Modern, Aviva, and Virgin Voyages alongside new prototype furniture pieces. The display will be hosted as part of British Collection which highlights local brands in the atmospheric St James’s Church and showcases design emanating from Britain.

Crafted From Waste

Each project begins with materials that are overlooked, surplus, or site-specific, evolving through a process of testing, making, and refinement in the studio’s Brighton workshop. Spared works directly with waste generated through its clients’ own sites, spaces, and operations, transforming it into bespoke furniture and design elements. By retaining a material’s origin within the final piece, each project creates a tangible link between process, place, and outcome. At the Tate Modern, the studio collaborated with Holland Harvey Architects to create tables and objects for Corner, the museum’s café overlooking the Thames. The pieces are made using coffee waste generated on site, which were collected and transformed into a rich, speckled composite. The resulting surfaces carry a subtle trace of their origin and are tactile, dark and quietly expressive.

For Aviva, in collaboration with Anomaly Designers, Spared designed and fabricated a reception desk using approximately 400kg of masonry waste sourced directly from site. Pigmented and hand-marbled in the studio, the material was shaped into a piece that balances raw origin with a refined finish. Crafted entirely from waste, plinths developed for Virgin Voyages, extend this approach across different materials and contexts. The plinth created for Valiant Lady used shell waste to create layered tones inspired by a geological cross-section. The surface reads like an earthy cutaway, rich with texture and natural colour shifts.

New Material Expressions

Alongside these projects, Spared will present a series of prototype tables exploring new approaches to working with waste materials. From timber by-products to industrial waste and post-consumer plastics, each piece begins with a distinct waste stream and investigates how these materials can be transformed into durable, design-led furniture. Rather than treating waste as a limitation, the studio uses it as a starting point, allowing the characteristics of each material to inform the final form. Developed through ongoing research and in-house experimentation, the prototypes explore how particulate, fragmented and surplus materials can be consolidated into new composite surfaces. Variations in colour, texture and pattern emerge directly from the source material, resulting in pieces that are both materially expressive and functionally robust. Together, they offer an insight into Spared’s evolving approach to circular design, where waste is reimagined as a resource for contemporary furniture and interiors.

Designing with What Already Exists

Spared’s work is grounded in a simple principle: to design with what already exists. Rather than sourcing new materials, the studio works with waste streams generated through construction, manufacturing, and everyday use, developing processes to stabilise, bind, and transform them into durable objects. In doing so, Spared extends the lifecycle of these materials and reframes waste as a resource with both practical and aesthetic value. The prototype pieces presented at Clerkenwell Design Week offer an early view into an evolving body of work, as Spared develops a made-to-order furniture collection built on its material research and fabrication expertise.

ABOUT SPARED
Spared® is born from a desire to support brands in reusing their own waste in their own environments. Their vision is to grow to create big change, and help clients take proactive action against waste and its impact on our planet by creating beautiful objects, furniture, art and surfaces from it. Designers by trade and guided by purpose, they create considered lasting pieces that hold both beauty and meaning.