February 21, 2024
Utilize Studios
Courtney & Matthew are a couple of Kiwis who share a passion for creativity, design and nature. Their mission is to create timeless, NZ made homewares which offer an eco-friendly way to live an aesthetic life. By only using recycled or sustainably sourced materials within every aspect of their work, they can minimise their environmental footprint, and influence sustainable consumption.
The duo's journey together began at university, where they both studied Industrial Design. Throughout their undergraduate studies, they gravitated toward embodying sustainability within their projects after having learnt about our planet's deteriorating state. This resulted in both of them pursuing master's degrees in Industrial Design and focusing their thesis projects on upcycling a range of waste materials through 3D printing. Leaving university, they shared aspirations to continue creating quality sustainable designs, but this time they wanted to share it with the world. So Utilize Studios was born.
Their name, ‘Utilize’ captures their ambition to make full use of every aspect within their design process. This means they aspire to make practical and effective use of every material, tool, technology and software that is used within each one of their products. It also means they are committed to utilizing existing materials by working predominantly with recycled materials and aim to introduce sustainable alternatives wherever possible.
Currently, they are focused on using additive technologies to transform recycled polymers and recycled plant-based plastics into beautiful homewares. Each of their products are designed and manufactured in their Wellington, New Zealand based studio with their robotic helping hand called Peter (Our Prusa 3D Printer). Using an additive process means they can make the most of their materials with no wastage, as it only adds what we need. It also means each product has its own unique characteristics and no print will be exactly alike.
