NONGZAO Practice • The Beginning of All Things Again

“Circulation is not repetition, but the beginning of another kind of growth.”

Original Text | Xu Gang • NONGZAO Field Notes

Beginning with a Calendar

The seasons turn, the traditional solar terms follow one another, and agricultural production unfolds in response to changes in nature. Through generations of cultivation, people have come to know the land, accumulate experience, and develop ways of producing and living suited to their local environments. Crops grow from the soil, enter everyday life through harvesting and processing, and agricultural by‑products may become resources for the next cycle of production. In this way, nature, production and daily life remain connected through an ongoing process.

Yet these connections do not always sustain themselves.

Modern agriculture has increased production efficiency and helped secure food supplies, but it has also contributed to problems such as soil degradation, declining biodiversity and resource depletion. Large quantities of agricultural by‑products are discarded once they have served their original purpose, becoming waste that must be managed. How might these materials be understood differently, and what other possibilities might they hold within production and everyday life? This is one of the questions that sustainable agriculture must confront.

Regenerative agriculture concerns not only crop yields, but also soil health, ecological relationships and the long‑term continuity of agricultural systems. Traditional farming knowledge and modern technologies can each play a role in this process. Design, too, can contribute to rebuilding these relationships, beginning with materials, products and everyday life.

In December 2023, commissioned by a project partner, BENTU, NONGZAO and the Museum of Sustainable Design (Materials) jointly completed The Beginning of All Things Again · Renewal and Regeneration, a New Year calendar set.

Centred on agricultural sustainability, the project took the changing seasons and traditional solar terms as its starting point, bringing together the reuse of agricultural by‑products and bio‑based materials to connect agricultural culture, materials and everyday objects. A calendar marks the passage of time, while allowing us to sense seasonal change in the course of daily life. Through this familiar object, the project sought to give more tangible expression to the rhythms of agricultural time and the circulation of materials.

The Seasons and Solar Terms: Establishing a Temporal Framework for Design

“Nature in Circulation, Agriculture for the Future” was the starting point for the design.

The partner's brand identity is built around a leaf motif. The arrangement of leaves symbolises the coming together of different individuals and partners. Four colours correspond to spring, summer, autumn and winter, each expressing the character of a different season.

Using the brand identity as a foundation, we developed a visual language around the four seasons and the twelve principal solar terms, incorporating the crops associated with each term into the graphic system. Spring evokes plants and seeds; summer, the sun and fruit; autumn, soil and harvest; winter, water sources and technology. Together, the four seasons form a visual thread running through the year.

The traditional Chinese calendar divides the year into twenty‑four solar terms, alternating between twelve jie (segmental solar terms) and twelve qi (complementary solar terms). They emerged from long observation of the sun's annual movement, climatic changes and seasonal patterns in nature, and once served as important references for organising agricultural work. Crops and farming practices vary from one region to another, and the temporal signals of the solar terms must be interpreted in light of local environments and farming experience.

For this project, we did not attempt to summarise the entirety of agriculture through a single graphic system. Instead, we established a visual order through the relationships between the seasons, solar terms and crops. The brand identity provided the underlying forms; the crops associated with each term introduced variations in content; and the seasonal colours held the system together. Through the arrangement, density and combination of graphic elements, each of the twelve solar terms acquired its own visual character, while contributing to the larger visual language of The Beginning of All Things Again · Renewal and Regeneration.

Sugarcane Bagasse Paper: Bringing Agricultural By‑products into Everyday Life

Sugarcane is an important cash crop. The bagasse left over from sugar production is a by‑product of agricultural processing. Finding ways to use this material after it has left its original production cycle presents a concrete question for the reuse of agricultural resources.

For this project, we chose paper made from recycled sugarcane bagasse for the calendar pages and red envelopes.

Calendars and red envelopes are closely associated with time, seasonal traditions and New Year customs. They also offer familiar ways of expressing agricultural culture. We wanted the renewed origin of the material to be more than a statement in the product description; it needed to connect with the object's actual use and the experience of handling it.

The calendar places dates at the centre of each page, alongside the twenty‑four solar terms and days dedicated to environmental protection. Time here is not only a means of organising daily life, but also an entry point for observing changes in nature and reflecting on the relationship between people and the environment. After its calendar function has come to an end, the paper can be reused as a coaster, allowing it to continue serving another purpose.

The set contains twelve red envelopes, each corresponding to one of the twelve principal solar terms. We used crops associated with each term as the central motifs, combining them with New Year greetings built around Chinese wordplay. In this way, traditional agricultural culture and festive wishes are brought together. Information about the relevant solar term and crops is printed on the reverse, allowing the envelopes to serve not only as carriers of good wishes, but also as everyday means of learning about seasonal rhythms and agriculture.

The actual environmental benefits of recycled materials depend on how the raw materials are processed, how the products are made and used, how long they last, and how they are ultimately disposed of. This project brought agricultural by‑products into everyday objects, making the origins of the material part of the product experience.

Recycled Woven Sacks: Retaining the Traces of Material

Plastic products are deeply embedded in agricultural production. Woven sacks, agricultural films and various forms of packaging facilitate cultivation, handling and transport. Once they have served their original purposes, however, their collection and disposal become practical challenges. Plastic waste left in the open can gradually fragment under prolonged exposure to sunlight, rain and mechanical forces, creating risks of pollution for soil and surrounding environments.

We repurposed discarded agricultural plastic woven sacks to make calendar stands.

After reprocessing, the original woven textures, printed words and colours remain visible across the surfaces of the panels in different ways. The results are not entirely uniform, nor can they be reproduced with the precision expected of conventional industrial products. Differences in the materials' origins and combinations give each stand its own distribution of colour and texture.

Rather than concealing all these traces, the design treats them as visual characteristics inherent to the material. Words and patterns originally associated with agricultural production, packaging and transport acquire another way of being read within a new object. The material's past has not been entirely erased; it has become part of the product's appearance.

This approach differs from conventional surface decoration. The visual variations do not come entirely from graphics deliberately added by the designer, but also from the recovered material itself. The designer's role is to select, organise and reveal characteristics that are already there.

Once the calendar is no longer needed, its stand can continue to be used as a phone holder. By giving the stand an independent function, the design allows it to remain useful beyond the life of the calendar.

Here, circulation involves more than turning one kind of waste into another object. It also concerns retaining the material's existing characteristics, reconsidering the object's functions and allowing it to continue through different stages of use.

Mycelium Packaging: Another Way for Materials to Grow

Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus. Under suitable conditions of temperature, humidity and other factors, its interwoven network can bind substrates such as agricultural residues together, forming a material with a degree of structural strength.

Unlike materials formed through cutting, pressing or melting, mycelium‑based materials take shape through biological growth. Agricultural by‑products become the basis for this growth.

For this project, we explored mycelium‑based materials for packaging, using agricultural residues as the growth substrate to investigate their potential in this field.

Packaging is generally designed around protection, transport and delivery. Once these tasks are completed, it often loses its purpose. We therefore proposed that, after fulfilling its original function, the packaging might be converted into a storage box or a planter, allowing it to continue into everyday life.

This proposal also raises new questions. Structural strength, water resistance, service life and degradation behaviour under different environmental conditions all affect whether the material can genuinely fulfil these subsequent uses. A bio‑based origin does not automatically mean a lower environmental impact, and claims about natural degradation must be assessed in relation to the specific formulation and actual conditions.

Whether an object can enter another stage of use depends not only on the intention behind its design, but also on whether material performance, practical use and subsequent treatment can work together.

From Materials to Everyday Life

The Beginning of All Things Again · Renewal and Regeneration uses the seasons and solar terms as its temporal framework, and sugarcane bagasse paper, panels made from recycled agricultural woven sacks and mycelium‑based materials as three distinct avenues of exploration. Together, they bring the theme of agricultural sustainability into a set of tangible everyday objects.

Each material addresses a different question.

Paper made from sugarcane bagasse brings an agricultural processing by‑product into paper and print applications. Calendar stands made from recycled woven sacks explore the reuse of discarded plastics and the potential for existing material textures to become a new form of visual expression. Mycelium‑based packaging raises questions about biological growth, material performance and what happens to a product after use.

Together, these approaches point towards the circulation of materials. Each material has its own processing requirements, performance limits and conditions of use. Design must do more than select something recycled or bio‑based. It must also determine what the material is suited for, how long it can serve its purpose, and where it will go once that use has ended.

The project brought together the temporal rhythms of agriculture, brand expression and material experimentation. It was both a completed design commission for a partner and a practical exploration of how sustainable design might enter everyday life.

Circulation does not mean returning every material to its point of origin, nor does it require every object to form a seemingly perfect closed loop. It is more a matter of finding new connections within existing conditions, allowing overlooked materials to find other uses and making visible the possibilities that remain after an object has served its first purpose.

The New Year marks the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.

May renewal and regeneration be more than festive wishes. May they take shape in the materials we choose, the objects we use, and our continuing understanding of the relationship between people and the land.

— Practice Period: December 2023