The DB Schenker’s Upcycling Hub demonstrates a sustainable future towards circularity for the logistics industry while creating awareness among users and visitors. When the project commenced in 2018, the 5,000 square feet (465 square metre) space was intended to be a lunchroom for the DB Schenker employees. However, creating over and above the client’s brief, scope and expectations, the project turned a “large room” into an Upcycling Hub, a bespoke space designed and manufactured with upcycled materials, incorporating waste management strategies and digital processes right from establishment.

With three years of research and development, the gathering space for DB Schenker, named “The Upcycling Hub,” fully committed to circularity. The pragmatic layout of space is organised in three bands: the red wall, away from the windows, where all designs are explained using technical axonometric drawings, addressing the complexity of the processes used during fabrication; the white band at the window side, maximises open views and natural light by the creation of a long table, where pendant lights are 3D printed from biopolymers: and the central area, where social activity is developed under the recycled PETG chandeliers, and around pallet tables, cardboard coffee tables and foam chairs.

To this end, more than 300kg of waste material has been repurposed and users feel empowered to find a solution to the daily waste problem. Secondly, the project has raised awareness among the employees and visitors, on how today’s technologies already impact our environment.

The Upcycling Hub is the first interior design in Singapore to implement cutting-edge technologies and digital design processes to repurpose waste into functional and beautiful interior spaces and it establishes the path for a completely new way of conceiving ornament, furniture, and spaces – all from waste.

Photography: Fabian Ong