Recycled leather

Structural Skin

Structural Skin is a self-produced material made out of leftovers and offcuts from the leather industry.

This project does not start from an interest in the advantages of a material but from its disadvantages. Leather is a beautiful material but very inefficient in terms of its manufacturing process due to its natural origins. No matter which tanning process a hide went through, the quality of a piece of leather depends directly on the part of the animal that it comes from - the higher the movement the lower the quality; some experts indicate that just 13% of a hide is top quality and up to 43% is considered good quality. This fact means that companies involved in the production of leather goods produce a large amount of discarded materials, leftovers and offcuts.

After extensive material investigation, Jorge Penadés devised a new production method that transforms the apparently worthless waste from leather factories into an innovative material that is made 100% from an animal source. Any resin or chemical component that has been used in the production has carefully considered the environmental impacts.

The result is Structural Skin, a new material that celebrates the inherent qualities of given skins while defining a new role for leather that has never been previously considered.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.