Melbourne-based furniture designer Joanne Odisho has won the Australian Furniture Design Award with an innovative lighting design made from discarded eggshells.Odisho collects thousands of eggshells from local cafés, then sterilises, dries and grinds them into a fine powder using a Nutribullet.She combines the powder with a biodegradable biopolymer to create a malleable composite material with a texture similar to wet sand.This mixture is then moulded into blocks and left to cure naturally over about a week without any firing process.The resulting material is described as cheap, durable, compostable, and showcases the natural colour variations of eggshells.

Odisho first developed the concept while studying furniture design at RMIT in 2022, where she was tasked with exploring food waste as a design resource.After experimenting with other organic waste materials, she settled on eggshells due to their unexpected strength and versatility.

Her winning entry, the Mod-u lamp collection, consists of modular, Jenga-like blocks that can be rearranged into different lighting configurations, including table lamps, floor lamps and sculptural pieces.

The design aligns with the competition theme “living well, living small”, focusing on multifunctional and adaptable furniture for compact living spaces.Judges praised the tactile quality of the material, its architectural form, and its configurability.

The award, supported by Stylecraft and the National Gallery of Victoria, includes a $20,000 prize and an opportunity for commercial development with Stylecraft.

Odisho will now collaborate with the company to further develop her work, with future ideas potentially expanding into other modular furnishings such as sofas.