Musaz

An architect and researcher with a PhD in urbanism walks into a backyard with banana trees in the Azores. As a joke, this story goes nowhere; as an ecological project, it goes very far.

Vanessa Melo founded MUSAZ with the goal of exploring the sustainable and socially inclusive potential of the banana plant in this insular region, transforming botanical waste into handcrafted items. This is because the banana plant does not allow a second harvest, becoming bio-waste after fruiting.

It all began in 2022, with a collaborative project, collecting banana plants from friends' and family's backyards, experimenting with extracting, drying, and crushing fibre from the banana stalks. This experience resulted in the book “Uma Viagem ao Centro da Bananeira” (A Journey to the Center of the Banana Plant), which tells the story of this first initiative and its discoveries.

But the project quickly grew, and in 2025 Vanessa created the brand MUSAZ, continuing the previous experience. In addition to creating beautiful objects with banana fiber - ranging from basketry to more textile items and banana paper - MUSAZ promotes training and leisure workshops for the elderly, children, and tourists, as well as disseminating and exhibiting creative work with this raw material.