With his new series ‘Automotive Surgery’, Arthur Pocheron upcycles junkyard scraps to give new value to automotive damage and repair processes. Inspired by the robust, enduring body of the Missile Drift, a car that can withstand severe damage and beating, and its makeshift body repair methods, the product designer puts damaged vehicles under ‘surgery’. Instead of simply concealing their defects, the series embraces them, dressing the wounds with discarded aluminum castings extracted from car junkyards and melted into shape using a low-tech furnace. The scraps take new life as handmade patterned aluminum plasters, each with distinct shapes, volumes and surface ornamentation achieved by imprinting the pieces in casting sand. 
all images courtesy of Arthur Pocheron
In an ongoing exploration of industrial resources, Arthur Pocheron re-evaluates their properties and uses and reinterprets their languages in various creative expressions. Uniting this with his fascination with the automotive world, its culture, and its practices, ‘Automotive Surgery’ reimagines the future of the discarded resources found in car scrapyards. To begin with, the designer built a foundry furnace- a nomadic and air-powered vegetable coal system- to fuel his process of recycling and melting pieces of aluminum in the ‘carcasses’ of cars. Transforming these scraps into ‘plasters’ with unique designs, Pocheron creates volume and surface ornamentation by imprinting the car parts in casting sand, which has also been extracted from scrapyard sites.
Opel Corsa’s rear bumper repair
Golf V’s front bumper repair, made with the shape of an old speaker’s grill
Honda Civic Mk6’s rear bumper repair
Arthur Pocheron custom-built a foundry furnace to recycle and melt aluminum pieces
aluminum casting in foundry sand
project info:
name: Automotive Surgery
designer: Arthur Pocheron
designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions’ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.
edited by: ravail khan | designboom
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