The aim of this project was to realise our own design for a classroom worn with use, using disposable materials typical for our consumer society and working jointly with students under my artistic direction (conception/realisation). On a number of excursions on bulk waste collection days and to the Düsseldorf trade fair centre, we collected disused chairs, cupboards, a bar, carpets, staircase steps, plants, etc., with the aim to re-use them as furnishings for the classroom by arranging them in unusual ways. A classroom materialised in which the teacher’s desk was substituted by a bar with barstools, and the space normally occupied by students’ desks and chairs features a bright red carpet from the boat exhibition ‘Boot’, as well as staircase steps serving as seating, similar to a circus. The walls including the discarded cupboards were varnished with a pink, orange and red-coloured wave pattern, which completely transformed the items’ second-hand character. In suitcases we found discarded plants were re-planted. This pilot project aims to show ways in which the matter of designing can be taken into one’s own hands again and how, using art as a catalyst, links can be forged between different levels, such as education, creativity, recycling and renovation. By way of this extended approach to artistic design, the considerable quantity of disposable materials occurring at trade fairs (carpets, wood etc.) and in private households is put into the context of socially and financially underprivileged institutions, in order to re-design these institutions at low-cost jointly with their users. Founding a company ‘creative recycling projects’, cooperating with the local exhibition centre, would help considerably to set the process in motion.