Met zijn Circle 2.0 dingt Hugo mee naar The Circulars Award 2017 voor beginnende ondernemers en die voor kleine bedrijven. Deze internationale competitie heeft als doel om mensen en organisaties te belonen voor hun bijdragen naar de overgang richting een nieuwe, circulaire economie. Dit betekent dat grondstoffen volledig hergebruikt worden en er dus geen afval meer ontstaat. Dankzij de kunststoffen koppelstukken die Hugo samen met 3d-expert Gilbert Peters ontwikkelt, is het Circle-meubel nog gemakkelijker en met behulp van nog minder energie volledig in de cirkel van consumptie, hergebruik en productie op te nemen dan voorheen. De uitslagen van de competitie worden bekend gemaakt tijdens de jaarlijkse bijeenkomst van het World Economic Forum in Davos in januari 2017. Lees hier de samenvatting van de inschrijving:
Hugo van der Kallen’s work evolves from both a passion for pure materials and an unbounded can-do mentality. In addition to being a self-made furniture designer, Hugo is a human being with enough common sense to see the current way in which mankind interacts with his surroundings will reach a dead end soon. Willingly or unwillingly: our economy will undergo a drastic makeover. To make his contribution to a positive change, in 2013 Hugo came up with Circle 1.0: a modular do-it-yourself kit consisting of easy replaceable wooden bars and steel coupling pieces. Using the latest 3d-printing techniques Hugo is developing synthetic couplings for the new Circle 2.0, which can eventually serve as raw materials for reprinting new ones. With this Hugo challenges consumers to design their own furniture.
Closing the circle of use and reuse of materials even further, Hugo offers a lease-construction to maintain co-ownership over the materials, and to share the responsibility for a circular way of disposing of them (the report on which this was based can be found on www.circleeconomy. com. Furthermore he will offer frequent ‘updates’ for the coupling pieces, to be printed by simply using the old couplings as raw materials for the nearest 3d-printer. This circular process is only getting stronger with the anticipated spread of 3d-printing services across communities. Circle blends the spheres of designer, producer and consumer into an interesting mix, everyone connected by the shared responsibility for circular use of the materials. Next to the higher level of reusing materials 3d-printing offers Circle, it also dramatically reduces the amount of transport miles and even creates new forms of local employment while enhancing some of the old.