Tag Archives: acrylic

B.15 Recycling Acrylic Waste with REFLO at Floreeda Fabrications

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In any design workshop, managing waste is an ongoing challenge, especially when the waste produced isn’t in large enough quantities to interest commercial recyclers. In the B.15 workshop, one of our waste management responsibilities is to deal with Acrylic offcuts and waste produced through student modelmaking, most notably from laser cutting activity. Whilst the quantities may be small by industrial standards, the impact adds up over time and it has always been our intention to find a solution to this waste stream.

For several years the team have stored acrylic waste in the hope of finding a sustainable solution as opposed to the general waste route which many workshops often default to. A key complication is that Acrylic (PMMA) cannot be recycled with general plastic and requires a specialised process. Most local recycling services are not equipped to handle it and the services that do, often recycle the waste at sites abroad. After exhausting conversations with recycling companies coming up with no useful solution, we turned to a trusted local supplier, Floreeda Fabrications.

 

We found that Floreeda had been developing an initiative called REFLOW – a process that allows for in-house acrylic recycling. This takes end of life acrylic parts and recycles them through a clean manufacturing process with no additives, turning them into new, useable sheet material. This promotes a circular and closed loop economy within the industry.

We’re now thrilled to say that we’ve received our first batch of recycled sheet material made entirely from the waste we had been storing over the years. Some of this recycled material has already been put to use, forming part of our B.15 Modelmaking award trophies that were handed out to this years student winners at the Manchester School of Architecture 2025 Degree Show.

 

 

 

 

 

Lara collecting the first batch of 'B.15' type recycled acrylic sheet

Lara collecting the first batch of ‘B.15’ type recycled acrylic sheet

Looking ahead, we’re excited to see how our students will incorporate the new REFLOW Acrylic into their work. Not only does the material perform like the original, but its origin gives it a story of sustainable thinking and responsible design. We also look forward to collaborating further with Floreeda to explore what other acrylic mixes and colours might be developed from our collected waste in the future.

This partnership represents more than just waste reduction; it’s a model for sustainable collaboration between education and local industry. This small but symbolic step shows how material circularity can be embedded into the culture of making. We hope it inspires others to consider how taking responsibility for even small-scale recycling can have a real impact, showing that patience and persistence to find solutions pays off.

Find out more about REFLOW here

– Lara Gerrard, Workshop Technician at B.15 Modelmaking Wrokshop

Subvert Skate Park, Saskia Furman

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This site is currently a car park in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Saskia’s 3rd year proposal for this site is a new development providing a space for the ‘socially un-welcome’. The development would include a skate park, hostel and other spaces for urban sports.

For this project Saskia used different coloured acrylics to represent different sections of her proposal.

This type of model is sometimes known as a ‘Jewel model’ due to the illuminated effect given by the coloured acrylics. Commercially this type of model get’s varied use.

Architects Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners favour this style of model during their design development stages.  Providing the CAD files are set up and drawn correctly this type of model can be a great quick addition to a project, this example took around 5 hours to draw, cut and assemble incuding some trial and error!

Extension to the Academy of Fine Arts, Venice, Benjamin Hale

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This project seemed to go on forever but Ben got there in the end after much thought and perseverance! Ben described the project in his own words for us:

“The project centred around the concepts of subtractive architectural restoration, revealing existing elements on site and adding additional elements to solve architectural anomalies often found in historical cities such as this.  The models represent at differing scales how the site interacts with this new architecture as well as how my own building functioned within the new public spaces created by this subtraction. Many of the models are abstract forms of more sophisticated concepts yet the message remains concise as to what each model is trying to achieve by the way of simplifying the material pallet and not resorting to complicated methods. The models are also interchangeable as long as they are created at the same scale and can be reused to create new models later on or explain an idea in greater detail. Model making is an integral part of any designer’s toolbox and new techniques should be tested, however often you can find that a new take on a tried and tested method will result in unexpected outcomes that will further you design.”

This series of models certainly give a varied view of Bens proposed project which is exactly what you should be trying to achieve in your submissions. Models are there to convey different aspects of your design in the best possible way. Spending time to think about exactly what you want to show and how best to show it is time well spent as frustrating as it can be at times!

Also, as a side note to you all, unless you plan to take your array of models with you to interviews etc. then good photography is essential to document your work. We will be looking to a devoted photography area of the workshop in the coming months in time for the start of your new term in September.