Sara Regal born on the seaside of Galicia, Spain, was deeply enriched from her native environment. After studying in Spain she moved to London, where she gained experiences working across diverse disciplines. Subsequently she mastered on Product Design at ECAL, in Switzerland, enabling her to explore and develop her own methodologies. Regal graduated in 2017.
Currently in Hong Kong, she is teaching product design at HKDI where she is discovering modern mass production and its correlation with traditional Chinese crafts.

For her diploma project she was inspired by recycled Pu foam: « I was captivated with its strong colorful patterns and rawness » She worked in collaboration with a Swiss recycling factory, she understood its potential as along life cycle product application.

FOAM-IT is 100% recycled and recyclable seating system for pop-up events made out of polyurethane foam scraps. There is a big necessity to create useful applications for the large amount of scraps produced instead of ending their cycle on landfills. Therefore, this recycling methodology is applied to a furniture system for events in a collaboration with a recycling factory based in Switzerland, considering the existing resources to keep the whole life-cycle on site. The component shapes are flexible enough to create infinite possibilities that can be assembled on site.

Regal elaborates an intuitive and experimental approach centered on material qualities and production, with a strong influence on color trends and art direction as we can see in her previous projects .

« Cuerdas », a quick production hand made sandals is made by a continuous rope, wrapping the foot’s anatomy like in the traditional espadrilles. The industrial material brings a new aesthetic to the craft sandal world alongside a long lasting product due to the strength properties of the rope. Each pair takes 10 minutes to be hand produced, speeding the craft labour.

« Garbo”is a flooring system which hides and leads the cables at the workspaces. The usual solution is to wrap them with metallic profiles or cable sleeves. The carpet is composed by a top felt layer and a bottom rubber grip. The rubber grip leads and keep sort the cables underneath, while keeping the carpet secure on place. The cables are imperceptible while walking on the top. Trough the rubber pattern on the top the user can pull out the cable at the desired point.
We will sure keep an eye on such a promising young designer!

Cecile Poignant

sararegal.com