Background information
Weirdcore 2025: this year’s strangest design picks
by Pia Seidel
These lamps were once dinner
12-3-2026
Translation: Natalie McKay
Pictures: Pia Seidel
From plate to lamp: how Contramar and Davidpompa turn leftovers into design.
Mexico City, Art Week – with one foot in Design Week. In the Davidpompa showroom in the Roma Norte district, you reach for a lamp as you would a shell on the beach – because it’s beautiful and you want it without knowing exactly why. A speckled pattern, a shiny metal shade, a base in muted red tones. Only when you ask do you find out what you’re actually holding in your hands: clam shells. From the restaurant around the corner.
The restaurant’s called Contramar, an institution of Mexican seafood cuisine. Over 800 kilogrammes of shells – almost half a year’s worth of waste – were ground down, combined with concrete and natural binders to form a composite, and poured into the lights as part of the «Fragmentos de Mar» exhibition. The shell fragments can still be seen, and reveal where these statement pieces come from.
The radical gesture of the obvious
This isn’t the first time founder David Pompa – who’s half-Austrian, half-Mexican – and his team have worked with Contramar. «Fragmentos de Mar» is the second iteration of this collaboration.
What the design studio’s doing here is essentially nothing new. For centuries, it was normal to use what was nearby. I’m talking about the farmer’s wife who turned bones into glue. The cook who made broth from fish scraps. The idea of closing material cycles locally isn’t a 21st-century invention. It’s a return to something we’ve simply forgotten over the course of time.
In a world where raw materials are flown in from overseas, and sustainability’s considered a complex certification process, this gesture seems radically simple. The material’s taken from the next table over. The three types of clam – blanca, reina and roja – come from Puerto Libertad, where they’re harvested by Contamar’s long-standing suppliers.
Physical proximity isn’t the backdrop, but the core. Pompa himself says the direct supply chain brings intimacy to the project. Sustainable fishing limits access to shells. That’s why there are only as many of these lamps as the number of clams eaten in the past few months. No more, no less.
A problem that nobody sees
Shell waste’s a serious issue, by the way. Shells decompose slowly, smell unpleasantly fishy, and pile up in landfills. They consist mostly of calcium carbonate – the same substance which forms limestone and marble. So the idea to use them as a material is obvious. But Pompa doesn’t explain this in words. He shows it.
The entire journey the material takes is brought to life in the showroom: fossilised artworks illustrate the shells as they were found on the tables at Contramar. Photos on the wall document the gathering of clams. The finished lights hang between them.
Visitors are even given a say in the project, and can choose which piece from the collection will go into production next. A small but meaningful move signalling that this is an ongoing process rather than a finished manifesto.
No compromise
This is what makes this project so different from many other ones dedicated to local material cycles: the material becomes the message, the product becomes secondary. The «Fragmentos de Mar» collection feels like clam shells were the first choice – the most beautiful, the most logical. The matt red tones contrast with high-gloss metal parts – and nothing looks like a compromise. And that’s the exact moment when the circular economy really starts to work: when no one feels they’re making a sacrifice.
Desire as a motive
The new cordless table lamp’s an example of this. Replaceable LEDs, a rotating shade, elegance without compromise. The visitors in the showroom were amazed: «It’s astonishing what you can do with it.» Or: «I want that too.»
Sustainability’s often painted as a double sacrifice: a lack of style and a lack of convenience. Anyone who puts forwards these arguments is failing because of human nature. Pompa flips this idea on its head: the lamp made of clam shells is beautiful precisely because of this material, not in spite of it. This statement piece encourages people to modify their behaviour, not through appealing to them, but by making them desire it. «Imagine this contains clam shells that were eaten at Contramar.» Suddenly the product’s a story you want to tell. No preaching needed.
Shells as a manifesto
«Fragmentos de Mar» supports the argument that the circular economy isn’t a question of ideology, but of craft. That thinking locally isn’t a limit, but a starting point. And that sometimes taking something old seriously again is the most revolutionary thing.
In the Roma Norte showroom, used ochre-coloured crates are stacked up to create temporary walls. Or they form picture frames for the fragments of shell material in various stages of production: untreated, processed, finished. A brief archaeology of cycles. You understand how the lamps are made. And you want them anyway. Actually, you want them for that exact reason.
Pia Seidel
Senior Editor
Pia.Seidel@digitecgalaxus.chLike a cheerleader, I love celebrating good design and bringing you closer to everything furniture- and interior design- related. I regularly curate simple yet sophisticated interior ideas, report on trends and interview creative minds about their work.
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