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Sustainable design interviews: a conversation with noma

in sustainable interviews

A sustainable design approach that combines the use of recycled raw materials, high quality, circular design, and transparency. These are the elements that raised my interest in the work of NOMA.

NOMA stands for noble matières (French for noble materials). At NOMA, the noblest materials of our time are recycled materials, which should be elevated to the value they can have.

What follows is a conversation I had the pleasure to have with NOMA’s founders: Bruce Ribay and Guillaume Galloy.

Recycled wood side tables.
Credit: NOMA
Close-up of a sofa made with recycled materials.
Credit: NOMA

Introducing you and your company; how did the idea of NOMA come to life?

When we met, 10/12 years ago, working side by side (already) for a luxury goods company, we started discussing this idea as a vague possibility. We both took different routes, but we kept discussing this as a more and more tangible possibility. It is only 2 years ago that both our agendas synchronised again and we decided to go for it. But the context is radically different and we cannot ignore it. We made the obvious choice to place sustainability at the heart of our company, and more precisely eco-design, and the use of recycled materials. We combined this with our own experience, high-end furniture development.

What does the word sustainability mean to you?

On an operational point of view, we focus on eco-conception. This means we take into account the impact of the whole life cycle: conception, production, distribution, use, re-use, end of life. And we start from the very first design stage: what will we use our products for, and how can we reduce the environmental impact through their whole life. This translates into beautiful long lasting products (they will have a long life and they need to be loved for a long time). At the same time, we focus on using recycled or waste materials to produce easily recyclable pieces. This is an every minute work, and this is only possible if we manage to get all our ecosystem on board: our suppliers, but also the designers, distributors…
On a more holistic point of view, we see sustainability as we could see finance. It is an aspect of the company you have to take into account for a durable business.

How did you decide to make circular design the focus of your company?

The first thing is probably the environmental context we live in. We simply cannot ignore it. When we made the decision to start a company, it was clear this was going to be part of the equation. And we decided to put this question at the core of our business.
The second thing is to decide on the answers we would give: do we design and produce another chair? What is the purpose? After some discussions, we decided our furniture should be beautiful (of course everyone will have a say), durable, and would be only the current life of the materials we use: we would use as much existing/recycled material as possible, and our furniture could be considered in some years (as late as possible) as raw material for something else.

Armchairs and side table made of recycled materials.
Credit: NOMA

In your mission you associate high quality with recycled materials, two concepts that are still often seen as opposites. In fact, recycled materials are commonly associated with poorly-made DIYs, hence low quality. Have you also noticed this tendency?

You are right, and this is the case for large part of recycled material. We would rather focus on a more positive side. We have been through an intense sourcing phase, and we found beautiful materials. These are the ones we have shared with the designers. These are the most NO-ble MA-terials. They do not look like anything we know and have their own identity. And this opens a new range of possibilities for designers.

Transparency is another key point in your mission. Could you expand on that?

Consumers are being more and more knowledgeable and you cannot fool them anymore. Transparency is key. People want to know what they buy. And this is only normal.
On our side, we are taking on the sincere commitment to be open and above-board at all times, on the history of our creations, our associates, the materials selected and the manufacturing processes we use.

Our world is in urgent need for sustainable development in all fields. In your opinion, what would speed up the change in the interior design industry?

If we focus on our field, we strongly believe that beauty is an extremely powerful driver for change. As you just pointed, recycled for instance is associated with low quality and/or ugly. By the moment we can produce beautiful and sustainable furniture, there will be no barrier and no reason not to choose it.

Indoor air pollution is another challenge we need to face. I was positively impressed to see your attention on avoiding toxic products in your designs. How do you approach that?

There are two aspects to this: the sourcing of the raw materials and the processes and finishes we use. This is a work we perform hand in hand with our partners/suppliers. Because we are starting our business, we could make a decision at every stage and choose our suppliers based on the material they use, the process they master and their attention to these points. Then we challenged them on all possible aspects to go one step further.
We also have to say that manufacturing in France is a great part of the job: regulations are quite stringent already compared to other manufacturing countries. Next step is to improve again on the baseline we draw. We also collaborate with an eco-design consultant company, MU Cooperative, in Paris, and we share with them all the results in order to get a precise expertise.

Sustainability is now a trending topic and it has become a must to show an interest in it. But when the interest is not genuine, this can turn into a mere pretence with little to no actual impact. In your experience, do you see a lot of this riding the wave or do you think a real culture of sustainable design is developing in the industry?

Both your statements are true… but if we want to look at the half-full glass, there is a very strong sustainable culture building-up. More and more awareness of the context, more and more understanding of the complexity, and more and more sincerity. Sustainability as a marketing tool will die, even though there is still a long way.

What are your next steps on your sustainability journey?

There is indeed a lot to be done. We have several goals we want to pursue:


anooi studio x NOMA.
This interview is an editorial collaboration with NOMA.