The new material combines clay and cow faeces, purged of urea and methane and baked at 1000 degrees
By G.D.
YOU can’t polish a turd, so the saying goes. But you can turn it into homeware, as a new material called merdacotta proves. Made out of clay and cow excrement, merdacotta—literally, “baked shit” in Italian—can be fashioned into tiles, tableware, flowerpots and, fittingly, toilet bowls. An installation of items made out of merdacotta was one of the most memorable offerings at this year’s Salone del Mobile design extravaganza in Milan. Luca Cipelletti, an architect who helped to devise the exhibition, says that “people smile and think it’s funny to talk about caca, but behind it all we are exploring interesting and philosophical ideas about man, art and nature as well as the concept of transformation.”
The merdacotta story started when Gianantonio Locatelli, a farmer in northern Italy, realised that his 2,500 prolific pedigree bovines were producing 30,000 litres of milk a day, as well as a staggering 100,000 kilograms of manure. Keen to do something productive with this noxious by-product, he invested in several state of the art digesters that could transform the excrement into fertiliser and methane gas for electricity. The next step was to extract the urea (from which plastic is produced) and dry out the remaining de-methanated concoction and use it as a raw material to make plaster, bricks and other objects.
A later encounter with Mr Cipelletti, as well as conversations with Gaspare Luigi Marcona, an artist and curator, and Massimo Valsecchi, a collector, gave birth to the idea of a Museo della Merda (“The Shit Museum”). It was launched in May 2015 as a series of outdoor and indoor installations, with the latter presented as a cabinet of curiosities in a late medieval castle on the grounds of Mr Locatelli’s farm. The pieces highlight the site’s innovative and sustainable approach to agriculture, as well as faeces’ lesser-known place in history as a construction material for ancient civilisations, or indeed as an essential ingredient in many curative potions.
Photographs and videos reveal the different phases of the merdacotta process. One video shows a Locatelli bovine taking an incredibly lengthy (and noisy) dump; another shows a tractor arduously moving tonnes of crap. The images are unforgettable. Elsewhere, canvases by Italian artist Roberto Coda Zabetta are decorated with a highly textured blend of excrement and pigments. The exhibition ends with a strikingly majestic 200m year-old dung fossil (or coprolite), and an impromptu gift shop selling merdacotta mugs for €10 upstairs.
Above all, the Museo della Merda’s mission is to showcase poo’s potential. Hence the recent launch of the merdacotta Primordial Products series in Milan. With its desire to say “no to form and yes to substance” Mr Cipelletti says the basic—almost primitive—assorted tableware, furniture and art pieces are a sort of “anti-design”, questioning what “design” is.
The products’ tactile and rough surfaces refer to their natural origins. “The imperfections are due to the straw in the dry dung product,” explains Mr Cipelletti. “When the pieces are cooked at 1,000 degrees the straw burns up and leaves little gaps and imperfections. It’s a bit like the terracotta you used to see before the manufacturing process became so industrialised.”
Whether any of the merdacotta mugs, bowls and dishes will be used to eat and drink from is debatable. Despite being fired at 1,000˚C, glazed and then fired again, Mr Cipelletti acknowledges that some will have a psychological block to using them. No matter, he says. “You can eat off them or put them on your wall, but we had to bring the project full circle to the themes of food and digestion.” The vases and flowerpots are a much easier sell, partly because merdacotta is light, and more resilient to changes in temperature, than terracotta.
What is certain, however, is that this low-budget display of primordial upcycled poo-centric objects was a hit. It won the Milano Design Award (given to the best exhibition design during the Salone del Mobile) against some 1,200 other entries including big-budget pyrotechnic offerings by brands such as Nike, Panasonic, Audi and Vitra. Its success suggests that people are captivated by design that connects meaningfully with nature and helps to solve pressing environmental issues. “This project makes people reflect and ask ‘where are we going? What is design? Why does everything have to move really fast?’” agrees Mr Cipelletti. “Maybe we need to slow down, admit we have gone too far.” Merdacotta is a perfect expression of that sentiment—it is about making the best of what we have. Even when what we have is shit.
