Cluster Crafts caught up with Pietro Petrillo, one of the top Italian designers in the innovative field of Biomaterials. We discussed his bio-brand Keep Life and his ongoing commitment to challenge core environmental problems, like deforestation. Pietro’s Keep Life is an eco-friendly material made from nut shells and patented as an industrial wood alternative. The dream behind the product is to create a pathway re-connecting mankind to Mother Nature.

Hello Pietro! You’re the creator of Keep Life. How did this come about? Tell us the story…

Keep Life was born in December 2015 by my intuition. In Southern Italy at Christmas time, at the end of every meal we traditionally place a woven straw basket in the middle of the table, containing a variety of nuts. Red wine is served to accompany these offerings of Mother Earth. In 2015, during one of the many Christmas dinners we’re used to having, I noticed how the nut shells, once devoid of their fruit, went to compose and form a harmonious and irregular mantle characterised by different hues and sizes and covering almost the entire surface of the table. Shortly thereafter, that table became an experimental workbench, which led not only to the creation of a new ecological material but above all to a new way of thinking about matter within society. At the beginning of 2017 the Keep Life brand was born, together with a patent for industrial invention. Designer, Ilaria Spagnuolo, joined the Keep Life project in early 2018.

A brand name is so significant in this day and age. Yours is cool and catchy. How did you come up with Keep Life and what is the deeper message behind the name?

The name Keep Life that identifies the brand and the material is the synthesis of a concept, a new way of looking at this material within today's society. Keep Life is a concrete gesture to create a legacy for a tree by keeping a part of it alive.

But how to keep a part of a tree alive?

It’s simple, using nutshells such as ha