BY THE END OF MAY is a research and design practice exploring the futures of local making. In a time when we can share online not only code but also material recipes and product designs, how can we reshape the way we make things? What if we designed for care and humbleness, rather than vulnerability and addiction? And how can we decentre humans from the systems we create and include everything else around us—the community at large, the non-human species, the environment?

POST PAPER STUDIO aims to be a low-tech alternative to upcycle paper waste at a local level, enabling designers and makers to transform paper waste from their own communities and use it in place of conventional materials. Once combined with natural binding agents, and pressed using modular energy-efficient tools, paper pulp is easily moulded into sheets, bricks or other basic shapes that become the building blocks of new objects and furniture pieces. The goal is to create an urban self-sufficient ecosystem of ateliers dedicated to paper recycling at a neighbourhood scale. The open source and low-tech nature of the project wants to turn the recycling practice from centralised and exclusive, to distributed and accessible, sparking a conversation around the efficiency of the current system.