Rethinking waste for future environmentally-friendly interior material applications by connecting local waste experimentation with open-access design knowledge.

Learn moreKUBIC is a research initiative and digital material library developed by the lecturers and students of the Interior Design Program at UPN Veteran Jawa Timur, Surabaya.

Our journey began with a simple question: What if waste could become a potential material for our everyday lives? Driven by this vision, we look at waste not as discarded matter, but as a catalyst for new material possibilities through sustainable design research and experimentation.

We explore and recontextualize local waste materials into composite solutions for interior design applications, bridging hands-on material fabrication with open-access digital documentation.

Our Process & Methodology:

• Local Waste Sourcing 

  We gather leftover materials from everyday businesses within a 5-kilometer radius including food markets, furniture workshops, bakeries, cafes, and local vendors.

• Iterative Fabrication

  Operating in our Interior Design Lab, we process and test various material combinations, resulting in over 80 unique composite material explorations.

• Digital Knowledge Sharing

  We systematically document each sample's composition, fabrication process, and applications into an accessible digital library turning physical research into shared knowledge.