SerVies

Iris de Kievith is an independent architect and researcher who focuses on transformational challenges and reallocation projects. Annemarie Piscaer is a designer and artist who in 2014 started Studio Dust, which researches waste streams and incorporates them into designs that showcase waste’s value. The two met at a meeting for air quality at the Rotterdam-based CityLab.

For the first iteration of their collaborative project SerVies (roughly: dirty tableware), de Kievith and Piscaer used fine particulate dust gathered by cleaning the streets of Rotterdam to make glazes for ceramics. The colour of the particulate matter makes (poor) air quality visible, and even tangible. The designers chose a tableware service because of its inextricability from our daily life. The project is not only focused on the practical result of the design of a series of tableware items, but also on developing a ‘communicative instrument’. In 2019, de Kievith and Piscaer expanded SerVies as Smogware, bringing the project to other cities in Europe. It is collaborative: locals gather air pollution; the designers produce the tableware; a delegation presents the tableware to local politicians to raise awareness of pollution in their city.