Story and Philosophy

Hello!

We’re Courtney & Matthew, the duo behind Utilize Studios. We are a couple of Kiwis who share a passion for creativity, design and nature. Our mission at Utilize is to create timeless, NZ made homewares which offer an eco-friendly way to live an aesthetic life. By only using recycled or sustainably sourced materials within every aspect of our work, we can minimise our environmental footprint, and influence sustainable consumption.

Our Pillars

Creativity.

We’re determined to think outside the box and develop refreshing ideas that challenge traditional manufacturing methods.

Design.

We use our knowledge of product aesthetics and innovative technologies to design and fabricate high-quality products.

Nature.

We are constantly inspired by our natural surroundings and strive to protect them by mitigating waste from reaching its end of life.

Our journey together began at university, where we both studied Industrial Design. Throughout our undergraduate studies, we gravitated toward embodying sustainability within our projects after having learnt about our planet's deteriorating state. This resulted in both of us pursuing master's degrees in Industrial Design and focusing our thesis projects on upcycling a range of waste materials through 3D printing. Leaving university, we shared aspirations to continue creating quality sustainable designs, but this time we wanted to share it with the world. So Utilize Studios was born.

Our name, ‘Utilize’ captures our ambition to make full use of every aspect within our design process. This means we aspire to make practical and effective use of every material, tool, technology and software that is used within each one of our products. It also means we are committed to utilizing existing materials by working predominantly with recycled materials and aim to introduce sustainable alternatives wherever possible.

Currently, we are focused on using additive technologies to transform recycled polymers and recycled plant-based plastics into beautiful homewares. Each of our products are designed and manufactured in our Wellington, New Zealand based studio with our robotic helping hand called Peter (Our Prusa 3D Printer). Using an additive process means we can make the most of our materials with no wastage, as it only adds what we need. It also means each product has its own unique characteristics and no print will be exactly alike.