Purva Chawla is a Dallas, Texas-based materials and sustainability expert, academic and mixed-media artist. Transforming waste into artifacts, installations, buildings, and experiences of value is the uniting and driving theme for her diverse work.

After practicing as an architect in the United States and India, Purva founded MaterialDriven in 2016. The materials consultancy and library now operates out of the United Kingdom, Spain and the US, serving clients in industries as varied as retail and hospitality, consumer goods, architecture, design and fashion. In parallel she has carved a path in academia, and holds the role of Adjunct Lecturer at Southern Methodist University and Lawrence Technological University in the US, teaching courses on materials and manufacturing processes, sustainability and embodied energy.

In early 2024, many years of tinkering and making in a garage, coupled with a decade of research and experience in circular, waste-based innovation, led Purva to the creation of Spazzatura Disegno–an artistic practice hinged on celebrating and revealing the potential within complex waste streams. Since then, her work has been seen at both well-known art shows and galleries in Dallas.

Through Spazzatura Disegno (Garbage Design) and her collection of sculptural works, Purva attempts to metamorphose both industrial and consumer waste, collected in the average factory, business, home, or even construction project. With the intent of highlighting the beautiful forms, textures, and narratives within ‘trash’, she embraces an array of materials, including but not limited to discarded hard and soft plastic packaging, discarded or spare metal parts and tools, plastic and wood offcuts, fractured toys, and scrapped textile. 

Aesthetically, her intent is to use the most synthetic and undervalued of ingredients to create striking symbols and forms that remind us of Nature. This sharp contrast, along with the gilded nature of many of her works, she hopes, draws in art and design lovers, and alerts them to the hidden worth of familiar and abundant waste. 

Purva is graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design in Philadelphia, and the Sushant School of Art and Architecture in New Delhi, India.