Natural Material Studio uses beer waste panels for brewery interior

In Copenhagen, Natural Material Studio has converted spent grain from beer production into indoor design panels for the city’s ÅBEN brewery.

Spent grain—also known as mask—is left over from the brewing process. Natural Material Studio’s Bonnie Hvillum tells dezeen the panels’ attractive swirly pattern is natural to the material. “The smaller particles, in powder form, color the material. The coarser ones create the pattern and give a visual indication of what the material is made with,” she said.

To make the panels, the mask was mixed with Procel, a protein-based bioplastic also developed by the design firm. Care had to be taken to ensure the mask didn’t ferment during the setting process.  “We were dealing with something that had already been processed once in the beer production. We needed to be very careful around the reheating of the mask grains,” the designer said. “If the mask fermented again, the panels would have never dried out.”

In the end, the “balance between our human gestures and the material’s own way of flowing is visible in the final sheets,” Hvillum said.