Maximum: reinventing materials to reinvent the way we produce

Rethinking waste: the genesis of a philosophy

Maximum was born on the benches of a design school. By handling the waste materials present on their campus, the three co-founders formulated a founding intuition. “We realized that waste carries strong creative potential. If it is ignored, it becomes a problem. If it is taken care of, it becomes a solution.,” sums up Romée de la Bigne.

A striking discovery accelerated this awareness: brand-new test tubes, discarded in blister packs by a laboratory. By transforming them into refillable glass pens, they uncovered a principle that would become foundational: “ With a material that has become undesirable, it is possible to imagine a desirable product. Design is a tool for transformation and desirability. ,” he explains. This inaugural gesture firmly anchors the idea that the resource already exists. The process is not about deciding on a product and then searching for the material, but the other way around.

Designing with constraint: a constant negotiation

Starting from existing materials requires engaging with them, adapting to constraint, and producing differently. “ We do not approach recycling in the traditional sense of the term. We work with materials that are already formed, designed for a specific use. The challenge is to negotiate between what the material allows and what we are trying to achieve. ,” explains Romée de la Bigne.

These objects were designed for a single function. Repurposing them requires understanding their original intelligence, then shifting their uses. “ We have to reconcile the available material, which imposes its conditions, with our mission: to create a coherent furniture brand. ,” he adds. Design then becomes a process of intelligent transformation, always rooted in what already exists.

Three products to understand the approach

1. Gravêne seating: turning the unforeseen into a singularity
This product is made from new plastic powder that was set aside due to simple colorimetric “errors”: traces of other hues mixed into the solid colors required by industry. “ The defect is purely chromatic. Technically, it is a new material. ,” Romée de la Bigne points out.

Maximum chooses to embrace this complexity. The designers envision chairs based on the mixing of pigments: a shifting, vibrant pattern that is impossible to reproduce identically.
“ We decided to turn it into an explosive mix of colors, so that the defect becomes a quality. ,” he states.

2. The Clavex table: repurposing industrial robustness
The Clavex table is made from out-of-service scaffolding modules, whose tubes and assembly systems were designed to support heavy loads with a high degree of adaptability. “Scaffolding is an extremely robust and adaptable system, simple to assemble and disassemble.,” says Romée de la Bigne.

Maximum uses these tubes and the existing scaffolding assembly system to create a framework capable of accommodating a wide variety of tabletops: glass, composites, and technical surfaces. The object conveys the constructive intelligence of a system originally designed for construction sites, transposed into a domestic or professional setting.

3. The Bultan Armchair: extracting intact material from street furniture
Most of the time, the safety barriers used by the Paris Police Prefecture end up at recycling facilities for the same reason: their base is bent, but the frame itself remains intact. “A very small defective area condemns the whole. By detaching the frame, you obtain a perfect material that already tells a story.”, says the designer.

Maximum recovers this frame and bends the metal to create the structure of an armchair whose geometry fully embraces its lineage with the public realm. The piece carries the memory of collective use and is rooted in a bold urban aesthetic.

The narrative power of technical materials

What sets Maximum apart is not only the final object, but their ability to perceive waste as a resource that tells a story. “Industrial waste is not truly waste. It is often high-quality material, set aside despite its technical sophistication, potential, and history.,” regrets Romée de la Bigne.

Carbon fibers from the aeronautics industry, professional textiles, shredded banknotes from the Banque de France… Maximum does not seek to erase the first life of the material; there is no rupture between its before and after. For Romée de la Bigne, this continuity is in fact one of the strongest drivers of attachment to objects: “What gives an object its value is not only its form. It is the story it carries, what it evokes emotionally.,” he adds.

The challenges of a reuse logistics

Working with lost materials means accepting uncertainty. Romée de la Bigne describes this phenomenon as a form of natural entropy: “The further we move away from the original manufacturing process, the more transformation points we add. And the more randomness increases.” This reality manifests itself at every stage: in the physical condition of the materials, in their dimensions, in access conditions, and in the very possibility of recovering the material.

Certain materials, such as office doors salvaged from construction sites, are a perfect illustration of this. On paper, the resource pool is vast and consistent. In reality, each one is a unique case. “Logistics becomes very difficult to stabilize, requiring a constant capacity for adaptation.,” explains Romée de la Bigne. Added to this are other rarely visible challenges: coordination with deconstruction companies, anticipating volumes, the need to store bulky materials that never arrive at the same pace, and the obligation to document this irregular flow in order to guarantee stable production.

It is precisely these challenges that make post-use materials more complex than production offcuts. Materials directly sourced from industry are consistent, standardized, and readily usable. By contrast, post-use materials require an organization built on constant adjustments, back-and-forth, and sometimes renunciation. Yet it is within this complexity that Maximum finds its richest stories and its most meaningful transformations.

Textiles: a new aesthetic alphabet

With textile offcuts, Maximum begins to explore a complex territory: heterogeneity of fibers, variable conditions, and sorting difficulties. The upcycling company creates a composite material capable of absorbing the extreme diversity of post-use fibers.
When this material comes from firefighters’ garments, it reveals a deep blue punctuated by red filaments—the signature of the profession. “We preserve the imagery, the color range, and the value of these garments.,” he explains. The material becomes pattern, memory, identity.

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