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Anchors
Designing presence through waste. Building softness from what we discard.
Role: Concept Creator | Researcher | Designer
Scope: Thesis Research, Material Innovation, Urban Prototyping
Location: Tel Aviv (speculative)
Context
Anchors was born from a shift in perception:
from waste as nuisance to waste as resource.
From linear extraction and disposal - to circular construction and quiet return.
The project emerged through extensive research into the material logic of urban refuse.
When I discovered the Israeli company UBQ Materials, which transforms unsorted household waste into a durable composite, the thesis shifted from speculative to implementable.
Suddenly, I wasn’t designing theory. I was designing with the inevitable.
Floating promenades
Gathering areas for leisure, movement, contemplation
Modular growth from shorelines
An ecological patch, a statement of care
A meeting place for humans, materials, and ecosystems
Strategy
Anchors proposes a modular micro-infrastructure made from reprocessed waste -designed to be installed in neglected urban voids, underused sidewalks, or water-edge zones where pollution is both visible and symbolic.
Inspired by marine geometries and growth patterns, the core unit is a hexagon - endlessly repeatable, non-directional, inherently connective.
The network expands fluidly without hierarchy, allowing both humans and ecosystems to gather, adapt, and breathe.
Each anchor becomes a gesture of soft reclamation - not only for public space, but for how we value matter.
The Panel In Action
Each panel is multifunctional and contributes to an interconnected floating landscape.
Solid Panel
Designed with a threaded insert to accommodate the Mini-Reefs unit
Mini-Reefs Unit
Vegtation Panel
Mesh Panel
Glass Inserts Panel
Connection System
The panels are connected using a male-female
Environmental Responsiveness
The system naturally adapts to tidal changes and sea conditions
From Waste Islands to Regenerative Anchors
This confrontation with global waste landscapes marked a turning point. What began as a disturbing discovery evolved into a counterproposal - one that reimagines our relationship with waste, the sea, and design itself. Anchors offers an alternative: not to fight waste, but to fold it into living, layered, marine-positive structures.
This global waste map reveals a critical pattern: most of the ocean’s plastic pollution originates in just a handful of rivers, then disperses through gyres to form massive garbage patches. The yellow vectors show discharge points from rivers; pink circles map floating debris concentrations. Anchors emerges as a spatial response to this map - a call to re-anchor waste as material, not menace.
"Trash Island" - a shocking visual manifestation of our linear waste culture. This image shows a floating mass of human-generated debris in the Caribbean Sea, stretching for kilometers. It became a trigger point in the Anchors project's research: what if we could intercept waste before it reaches this scale, and design with it instead of against it?
Material Intelligence
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Constructed from UBQ’s proprietary waste-based composite
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Lightweight, waterproof, UV-stable - suitable for both land and marine-edge applications
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Designed for minimal anchoring, allowing soil, roots, and organisms to pass through
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Easily deployable, removable, or upcyclable again​
These are not static objects.
They are living tools in a metabolic chain.
Ecological & Human Layers
The anchors serve multiple species:
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For people, they provide seating, shade, interaction, slowness
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For marine life, they support artificial reef formation and shelter micro-ecosystems
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For the environment, they remove waste from circulation and prevent further oceanic leakage
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Each unit diverts materials from landfills and turns them into infrastructure for care -care for the city, care for the ocean, care for the future.
Outcome
Anchors is not a protest.
It’s a quiet proposal: to build the city not on top of its waste, but from it.
It reframes pollution as potential, and pauses as progress.
The more waste we produce - the more space we can reclaim.
It is not a bench. It is a biome - made of what we thought had ended.
