Retrouvius and Korean designer Subin Seol team up to breathe new life into architectural remnants from a brutalist icon to make the case for reuse as both necessity and inspiration.
Teak handrails, salvaged from Fawley Power Station, Hampshire (UK), once an architectural landmark powering the South Coast and latterly as a filming location, now find new form in The Remembrance Chair – a creative collaboration between Retrouvius and Korean artist, Subin Seol.
The collection, limited to an edition of 16, which can be viewed and purchased in the duration of the London Design Festival 2025, was initiated when Subin heard Adam talk at the Royal College of Art as a student. A follow up visit to Retrouvius resulted in Subin “discovering” the hand rail in the warehouse – the tricky reuse leaving the material languishing in a corner of the shop until Subin saw its limitations as design potential.
Subin Seol combined her skill for and love for materiality with sensitivity and precision. Her interpretation of the reclaimed teak is both sensitive and bold, allowing the story of the wood to remain visible while reshaping it into something quietly radical.
“I wanted to honour the past life of the material while giving it a form that feels alive and present” says Seol. “Working with something that’s already lived – already held meaning – invites a different kind of responsibility. But also opens up space for emotion in the making”.
“We’ve built a practice on the unexpected potential of what others leave behind” says Adam Hills. “It still surprises me that reuse isn’t more central to how we design. This collaboration allowed us to explore what’s possible when you give beautiful materials – and a brilliant young maker – space to breathe. But it’s also a provocation: What could design look like if we took reuse not as a constraint but as the starting point for creativity? What happens when designers treat materials with memory not as waste, but as a story worth continuing? These are some of the important questions it asks”.
The Remembrance Chair can be viewed at The Retrouvius showroom from the 15th to 19th September 2025. Each piece is individually labelled and crafted from varying cuts of the reclaimed handrails, offering subtle differences in tone, texture and history – making every chair inherently unique.
