Rust Harvest

“Rust Harvest” is an experimental materials project focused on rust. The prevention of rust is an age-old problem in manufacturing. Rust has brought down planes, slowed ships, disabled engines, ruined bridges, spread through reinforced concrete, jammed guns, broken washing machines, and reduced unnumbered bicycles to useless scrap. While constantly cast as a devil, a closer look at rust reveals a variety of startlingly beautiful patterns and complex mixtures of colour.

With this in mind, Yuma Kano Studio believed that the attractive expressions of rust could be produced in quantity and used in new textures and products. They developed a technique that allowed to transfer only the rust from metal plates using acrylic resin. These plates are exposed to light, rain, earth, and seawater to create rust. The rust is then collected, and the plates are exposed to more weathering, which creates another crop to harvest in a process similar to an agricultural cycle.

Unlike metal, the light penetrates rust trapped inside the resin, which creates a frozen moment from a process that has taken years. Because the resulting material can be used like ordinary acrylic resin, it holds limitless possibilities for various products, interior design, and construction.