Found Associations Turns Paris Café into Biomaterial Lab for Design Week 2026

Key facts

• Found Associations is a project by four Latvian designers and artists in partnership with Kalve Coffee for Paris Design Week 2026.
• The project treats the café as a material ecosystem, using used coffee grounds, dirty water, and excess foamed milk as raw materials.
• Mārtiņš Mežulis created a water filtration system that turns coffee grounds into biochar via pyrolysis with CharcoTec, then activates it with steam with help from Yang Liu of Eindhoven University of Technology.
• Katrīna Tīna Smilga's Milk Glue heats and acidifies leftover foamed milk, separating curds and water; the dried, milled curds form a glue-like material.
• Līva Sakārne combined dried coffee grounds, milk glue, and filtered water into a moldable material pressed into wooden molds to make coffee trays with organic shapes inspired by spilled liquid.
• Some of Sakārne's trays were used in Kalve Coffee's daily service during the exhibition, replacing conventional trays.
• Paula Punkstiņa created amber-colored sculptural interior elements from dirty water, glycerin, and resin that appear to capture water's movement.
• The exhibition's title, Found Associations, refers to creating new interpretations for excess materials and rethinking the language used to describe discarded substances, moving beyond the category of 'waste.'