W Taipei has launched its eco-designed jewelry holder, a design piece that was one of the final selected items of the “Trash Re-design Taiwan Design Center (TDC) x W Taipei” project. It was created by Taiwan designer Fanny Kuo and made from the hotel’s recycled Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene (ABS), otherwise known as empty water bottles. Hotel guests can now place their fashion accessories on the jewelry holder when they stay at one of the 405 guest rooms at W Taipei. The stylish product is available at W Hotels -The Store on level 10 for TWD2,800 for the guests who love it and want to take it home.
“I’m so thrilled to see jewelry holder coming to life from scratch. It’s a perfect product, marrying design and fashion into one piece as an in-room-amenity to enhance the guest experience, especially for our fashion-forward female travelers,” said Cary M. Gray, General Manager of W Taipei.
The jewelry holder is inspired by “Nature Electrified”, the dynamic design narrative of W Taipei, and not only a sustainability design piece, but also a fabulous yet functional product. The past year was definitely a learning journey for W Taipei and Fanny Kuo, brand director of CACHE-CACHE Design, who had never used the recycled material before. The time-consuming process consisted of meetings with the design firm to go through the plastic injection, tooling, alteration of the tree-shape curves and angles, ultrasonic bonding for the parting lines, W-red color painting, test runs, and the final mass production. In the end, the glossy and seamless product has checked in the guest room and is now a dedicated part of the service at W Taipei.
“Trash Re-design TDC x W Taipei” transformed used plastic items, such as water bottles, in-room slippers and bath amenities at W Taipei into green materials with the sustainability expertise from Miniwiz. Then the 7 teams of talented Taiwan designers applied theses materials to the trendy items that would once again be used back at W Taipei. The project has also been implemented as a successful green initiative to W Hotels in Asia Pacific and participated “Business of Design Week” sponsored by W Hong Kong.
During a 4-month design workshop in 2013, designers had been faced with challenges, including meeting the needs of the hotel and unique design style, demonstrating the features of the green materials and developing protocols for mass production. Therefore, in producing the design, 3D prototypes and mockups constantly pushed the designers to think innovatively. Involving different industries and expertise, this project was unprecedented in the hospitality industry in Taiwan.
As a leading design hotel with a passion for fashion, music and design, W Taipei has devoted itself to environmentally sustainable development while still providing a 5-star service standard. The hotel produces more than 300,000 used plastic bottles each year. Conducting this green design project was a very innovative solution to alleviate the environmental pollution caused by this daily waste.
