Fragmentos de Mar: lost seashells become a lighting design collection
In the artsy neighbourhood of Roma Norte, davidpompa shows how reclaimed food waste can be incredibly beautiful in his latest work, celebrating the story of seashells in a conversation between the past and the present.
Presented during Mexico City Art Week 2026, Fragmentos de Mar is an exhibition by design studio davidpompa and local restaurant Contramar. At its core, it transcends conventional material exploration, transforming six months’ worth of seafood waste into a meditation on metamorphosis, memory, and the cyclical nature of consumption and creation.
The shells have travelled from ocean to kitchen to studio, from protecting life to becoming a symbol of it. In a fragmented state, scattered throughout a new medium and shaped into new forms, they become more articulate about their origins, showing how no material is truly waste.
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Founded in 1998 by chef Gabriela Càmara, Contramar has become a culinary pillar in Mexico City, where fresh seafood becomes an unforgettable dining experience. Like any restaurant, its kitchen generates waste, but rather than viewing these remnants as trash, davidpompa saw an opportunity to continue the material’s story. Using discarded seashells became a way to continue giving value to this precious animal and food, celebrating its former life.
The result is a bio shell composite, created by grinding down the shells and combining them with concrete and natural binders. In this process, the shells transform into a material with a terrazzo-like aesthetic, with their fragments visible as evidence of their physical and conceptual presence.
The Fragmentos de Mar exhibition traces the material’s complete journey: first illustrating how the used shells were found on the restaurant’s tables through fossilised artworks, to then show each step of the material processing, and finally arriving to the final products. The terrazzo material was mostly used to create a lighting collection. Of this collection, a few pieces are already in production, but the visitors had the chance to vote which product to manufacture next, creating a participatory design experience.
The environmental dimension of Fragmentos de Mar is significant, though the exhibition never becomes didactic about it. Shell waste is a genuine ecological challenge, as they cause odor pollution and biodegrade slowly, contributing to landfill overflow as well as potentially releasing harmful gases. Seashells are mainly composed of calcium carbonate, the component behind limestone and even marble, and have therefore created a strong interest in their potential for designers.
davidpompa is a studio founded in 2013, whose core commitment is to the appreciation of Mexican materials. It is known for creating unique designs using honest materials that celebrate the essence and craftsmanship of Mexico, from volcanic stone from molcajetes to black clay from Oaxaca. Each material the studio selects carries a historical and narrative weight, which is then brought into a minimalist and geometric design to become an unexpected aesthetic statement.
Despite many seashell waste applications already existing, what sets Contramar and davidpompa’s approach apart is the refusal to position sustainability as the primary selling point. The collection is, first of all, beautiful, and creates interest because of what it makes a viewer immediately feel, rather than through a boring, data-based explanation. The unique characteristics of the material, the way light interacts with its surface, the cultural resonance it carries all come first, and the environmental benefits follow naturally from this philosophy. This way of communicating sustainability makes it more exciting, more approachable, and therefore ultimately more effective.
