Bengaluru studio Multitude of Sins has used rejected samples, broken prototypes and construction waste to transform an apartment into its material lab and research space.
The lab, named Requiem for Ruins, is located in a former residential apartment building on the same floor as the Multitude of Sins studio.
This was turned into a material lab, which the studio will use for research and vendor meetings, with around 95 per cent of the space built from salvaged waste.
Installations crafted in collaboration with local artisans are dotted across the lab, which consists of a selection area, lounge, pantry, store room and two meeting rooms.
“Born from two years of quiet collecting and deliberate delay, the lab is a spatial memoir of chipped tiles, warped MDF, and forgotten attempts,” Multitude of Sins said.
“Working with these overlooked pieces revealed that what society dismisses as useless can, when approached thoughtfully, be reimagined into forms that are both functional and artistic,” studio founder Smita Thomas told Dezeen.
The entrance to the space is framed by an assortment of construction debris, and the studio used wire and lightbulbs resembling stars to create a sculptural panel beside the door that is engraved with its motto.
The foyer gives way to the lounge and selection area, which sits at the heart of the material lab.
Among the waste materials that Multitude of Sins used in this area were scrap chains, perforated metal sheets and surplus brass knobs.
The studio also used wooden beading samples created for its project Pennyroyal Tea to craft floating bookshelves for the lounge. These were paired with light fixtures made from excess acrylic sheets from another project.
Adjacent to the lounge, a staircase leading to a currently empty space was decorated with a sculptural railing with geometric shapes made with acrylic offcuts.
Thomas explained that the lab will eventually expand into this unfurnished space, transforming it into another research space for Multitude of Sins.
Beyond the lounge is the selection area with a central 12-foot-long table crafted from scrap marble fragments, plywood offcuts and mesh.
Here, repurposed pieces of an old staircase railing were used to create a pegboard, which can display over 300 material samples.
A desk and storage system using 24 wire mesh baskets sourced from IKEA was installed below the pegboard.
Multitude of Sins converted two bedrooms in the apartment into meeting rooms, one for vendors and one for its team, while the third was turned into a store room.
The vendor meeting room is characterised by an installation made from waste plywood, MDF and blockboard pieces that were folded to create a three-dimensional form resembling a zigzag pattern.
A similar installation, made from backlit acrylic panels and discarded junction boxes, is suspended from the ceiling of a corridor that connects the vendor meeting area, selection area and lounge with the rest of the lab.
A wall clad with metal offcuts and surplus bricks arranged to resemble a steampunk-style tree stands at the end of the corridor. The prototype of an MDF artwork created for a previous project, Pearls on Swine, was fixed at the top to resemble the tree canopy.
Another bespoke ceiling treatment made from abstract MDF shapes features in the second meeting room, while in the pantry, the team lined the edges of the ceiling with plywood scraps and used a drum dolly to create a light fixture.
Thomas told Dezeen that the material lab will continue to evolve over time.
“The Lab was always built with elasticity, with a structure that invites the unfinished, the discarded, the fragment,” she explained.
“Its evolution lies not in changing form, but in deepening narrative where every prototype, every overlooked sample becomes another sentence in an ever-expanding text. The Lab grows the way memory grows, not by replacing, but by layering.”
Previously, Multitude of Sins used a mishmash of reclaimed materials to create an eclectic restaurant interior.
Other spaces that use salvaged materials recently featured on Dezeen include a London restaurant by local studio Nina+Co and a four-square-metre sauna in the Czech Republic.
The photography is by Ishita Sitwala.
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