Tag Archives: stool

Minimalist stool made from recycled aluminum boasts a carbon footprint lower than the European average

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A lot of people have become more conscious about how the things that they consume are produced. A lot of brands and products have also jumped onto this bandwagon or hopefully, new lifestyle. Some of these are just cashing in on an eco-conscious society while some are pretty serious about really creating things that can be sustainable and at the same time, not giving up on the aesthetics and even adding affordability as a consideration. Furniture brand JOY Objects is one of those and their latest piece brings together “progressive design, small-scale production, and reasonable prices”.

Designer: Fredrik Paulsen

The JOY Stool One can be a side table, a chair, or whatever you need it to be. But what makes this minimalist piece of furniture stand out, so to speak, is that it is produced from recycled aluminum and can actually claim that it is produced with a lower carbon footprint. It is actually the first piece of furniture that is based on Hydro Extrusion’s Swedish EPD or Environment Product Declaration. Its carbon footprint is 3.58 kilo CO2 eq. per kilogram of aluminum produced. In case those numbers don’t mean anything to you, it is actually lower compared to the European average in the industry.

In terms of the design, it maintains the minimalist aesthetic we’ve come to expect from Swedish designers but also brings a bit of playfulness to its look. The Hydro Restore Innovate aluminum and recycled acrylic brings it a shiny but at the same time, peaceful and Zen vibe. Its simple square and transparent look means you can use it as a side table for your drinks or books. Whatever you place on it seems to become a bit cooler and instagrammable.

But of course, as stated in its name, it can also be used as a stool. It may look delicate but the aluminum should be sturdy enough to hold a human. I don’t know how comfortable you’ll be on it but at least you would also look picturesque. And the important thing about the JOY Stool One is that the makers mean it when they say they it is sustainable, from the materials to the manufacturing to the packaging. The price may be a bit steeper than other stools but it should be worth it.

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This rustic horse-riding saddle-inspired stool promotes great posture and strengthens your core

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Stools are probably the most overlooked type of furniture there is. You will almost always find them, forgotten and barely used, in some corner of our homes. When truth be told, they’re much more functional and ergonomic than they are given credit for! They’re compact, and a great space-saving furniture option for our modern homes. They are also super portable! And designers are really unleashing their creativity when it comes to stools. And one such innovative, quirky, yet ergonomic stool design I recently came across is the ‘Pepe’ stool.

Designer: Raffaella Mangiarotti for Opinion Ciatti

Designed by Raffaella Mangiarotti, the Pepe Stool is deeply inspired by a ‘horse-riding saddle’! Raffaella drew inferences from the saddle, especially its aesthetics and ergonomics to create the sturdy-looking Pepe Stool. He designed the stool for the Italian brand Opinion Ciatti. The Pepe stool is a rather playful and amusing twist on saddle stools. Saddle stools are popular for promoting good posture, and for helping users strengthen their core since they feature no back support, and enable you to tilt your pelvis forward.

“Pepe is boundless expanses and infinite horizons. Pepe is the Argentine Pampas, a scent carried by the wind, an airy sky,” said Opinion Ciatti. Usually, saddle stools draw inspiration from bike seats, and mimic them quite accurately, however for the Pepe stool, Raffaella instead drew inspiration and incorporated references from the Wild West. The Pepe stool features hand-stitched leather upholstery that is tautly stretched over a curved and sturdy sled base. The result is a rustic and strong-looking stool that instantly brings to mind the image of a horse-riding saddle!

Pepe Stool has a bold and attention-grabbing personality, one that allows it to function as a stand-alone furniture piece, however, you can also pair it up with a desk, creating a workspace that is great for your posture! Pepe’s sculptural aesthetic makes it perfectly suited for both homes and workplaces, however, I do feel it would seem a little out of place in a corporate work environment. Pepe is available in options of black and natural leather. The leather is tanned using aniline dyes, allowing it to retain its impressive tactility.

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Foldable stool and desk concept is a low-cost solution to school furniture problems

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While most people recognize education as a basic human right, the painful truth is that, just like many other rights, it isn’t universally available everywhere. There is always a resource problem, from books to teachers to even rooms to hold classes in. While that last one might sound superficial compared to the lack of books, a good and comfortable environment can go a long way in improving children’s reception to lessons. In some cases, a permanent classroom isn’t even an option, so makeshift rooms are the only recourse. Of course, that still requires proper desks and chairs for use, but you don’t have to go overboard with these. While cheap plastic furniture sounds like the easiest solution, this design concept shows an alternative that isn’t only more sustainable but also more flexible when it comes to storage and portability as well.

Designer: Claudio Larcher

In areas with no fixed rooms designated as classrooms, being able to move around or clear out desks and chairs is just as important as having school furniture at all. Typical tables and chairs are single solid pieces that are difficult to move around, not to mention keeping them in storage. A good portion of time is wasted in setting and cleaning up such rooms, presuming they even have rooms or furniture. Even simple school furniture can be expensive, and cheap plastic options have hidden costs that actually make them more expensive in the long run.

Paco y Paco is a design concept that tries to check all the right boxes for a low-cost school furniture solution that is also sustainable and, to some extent, fun. Both the desk and the stool share the same basic shape of wooden planks connected in a row. The basic idea is for these to fold into trapezoidal form, with the two sides serving as legs while the middle one is the actual tabletop or seat. When no longer in use, they can lay flat for easier carrying and storage until their next use.

The design of the furniture is also quite interesting in how it uses ropes as the primary mechanism to fold or collapse the two. Many people, kids included, will be familiar with such cords used to loosen or tighten bags. A wooden ball acts as the stopper to keep the knot from slipping, while metal grommets keep the rope from fraying. With perhaps the exception of the rope, the entire desk and chair could be made from 100% sustainable materials that can be easily made or procured anywhere.

It’s probably arguable whether such a furniture design is going to be comfortable, but for schools or villages with meager budgets, it’s definitely better than nothing. Perhaps a bigger question is the stability of the design, especially the chair, given how a rope is probably the only thing that will keep it from collapsing beneath a child’s weight.

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This modular concrete stool blends contrasting elements in a brutalist package

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Concrete is not something you’d immediately associate with flexibility and comfort, especially as applied to chairs and tables. The material is great for making outdoor furniture that remains rooted in place until they’re damaged beyond use and repair. They often have fixed forms, too, considering they’re not the easiest things to move or change anyway. That, however, means lost opportunity in shattering expectations and pushing the envelope of what you can do with the material. Fortunately, not everyone is easily intimidated by concrete’s rough demeanor, and this modular stool system demonstrates what’s possible when you start playing around with shapes, colors, and materials.

Designers: one J, Jeongjin Ko, Jinsu Du, Keetae Kim (Superkomma)

In its most basic configuration, the CONECTO stool looks like any ordinary cylindrical stool with a colorful top. That, however, is an illusion, given that the seemingly whole concrete base is actually two half cylinders joined at their flat side. You might take for granted how this “half shape” can be used in a modular fashion, but almost like LEGO, they can become the building blocks of larger stools that can accommodate more people at once.

Joining the two halves on their curved side allows a square “cover” to be put on top for a more traditional stool. Putting half a cylinder on one side extends it a bit for a more comfortable arrangement, but adding yet another half on the opposite side creates an oblong bench. If, on the other hand, you put three full cylinders together in a triangular formation, you can have a bench that can accommodate as many as three people.

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Part of the CONECTO’s modularity is thanks to the acrylic top that joins different pieces together. This material also provides a striking contrast to the concrete base, creating a visually interesting outdoor furniture design. Where concrete is cold, raw, and rough, the translucent acrylic top is softer, colorful, and alive. The stool, whether alone or with others, provides a mix of brutalism and minimalism that could attract people to look and even sit.

The concept for CONECTO’s design also has sustainability as its goal from the get-go, using high-strength UHPC concrete with no harmful compounds. It the future, it is planned to also make use of recycled waste materials, creating an ecosystem that is not only free in its flexibility but also free from negative effects on the environment.

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Camber envisions chairs and benches made from a single sheet of metal

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Furniture is so critical and so common in our lives that few of us probably give a second thought to how they’re made. As long as they serve their purpose and look good, tables, chairs, and other pieces of furniture might as well be made from alien material for most people. Unfortunately, the materials and processes used to make these essential products have started to chip away at the health of the planet for the sake of keeping humans comfortable. Designers have started to become more aware and conscientious of this problem, and they have started to put their creativity to work in solving it. In addition to using sustainable materials right from the start, another potential answer is to reduce the amount of waste that results from the manufacturing process, like a single sheet of metal that is then cut and bent to form a sharp-looking chair.

Designer: Paul Coenen

Even the simplest piece of furniture sometimes uses multiple parts. A table will be made of at least four legs attached to a tabletop, and those connections might require screws or other means to keep the table from falling apart with the slightest weight. With conventional furniture designs, these parts are often cut out or formed at different times from different materials, a process that often yields wastes bits and pieces that can no longer be used anywhere else.

Some furniture designs have become a bit smarter by attempting to utilize every inch of a single sheet of wood or metal, but those might still need extra parts to connect them together. A more efficient way would be to just use the whole sheet and nothing else, but it’s also more challenging to create visually appealing designs. You might think it’s a simple case of folding metal, for example, but making it usable while also looking good is actually harder than you might think.

Camber is an attempt to check all those boxes by cutting and bending a single sheet of stainless steel to form seats you’d want to look at as much as sit on. Rather than simply bending two ends to form legs, the design actually involves making two angular cuts where the folds would happen before actually bending down the legs. This creates not only a more interesting design but also adds some stability to the bench or stool’s legs.

Sanding gives the seats a reflective yet matte surface, removing the need for any harmful coating. It’s an almost perfect complement to the designer’s SST mirror, which uses the same single-sheet principle, except that the surface is polished to the point that it becomes more reflecting. Stainless steel might not be the most environment-friendly metal, but its longevity ensures that these chairs and benches should last far longer than other types. Camber is simple, almost brutalist in its appearance, but its appeal goes beyond looks, offering a design that isn’t only efficient but also, in some odd way, charming in its own right.

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This wooden stool offers a sustainable replacement for a common household product

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No matter what part of the world you’re in, you’d probably come across a plastic stool that is employed for different purposes around the house. Of course, it is primarily a seat, but sometimes it’s also used as a makeshift side table for holding tools while you work around the house. Some more daring people even use it as an ad hoc ladder, though that largely depends on the build and stability of the stool. No matter the purpose, this kind of stool has become so ubiquitous that it could be one of the most common uses of plastic in the market. Of course, such a stool doesn’t need to be made from plastic, and this design translates that into wood with some additional quirks that make it stand out.

Designer: Antoine Laboria

Wooden stools are easy enough to make, but one that has the durability of the common thermoformed plastic stool presents a few more challenges. It gets even more complicated if you try to recreate the unique and somewhat iconic form of the plastic original, a form that doesn’t translate cleanly to wood. Throw in some requirements about sustainability, and you’ve got quite the design puzzle.

Thanks to thermoforming, plastic stools often have contours and curves that would be impossible to recreate on wood except through carving. That is definitely a possible solution to recreating the plastic stool faithfully, but it is also expensive and impractical, unlike these sundry pieces of furniture. The Plastic Translation Stool design tries to reinterpret the lines of the plastic stool instead, resulting in a form that is somewhat similar yet also unique, giving the wooden stool its own character.

Those legs alone, however, won’t be enough to offer the same stability as the plastic counterpart, so an additional element had to be added. Birch plywood buttresses distribute some of the force evenly across the beechwood legs, which, in turn, hold the buttresses together. These interlocking parts provide not only architectural stability but also visual accents to what would otherwise be a plain-looking stool.

Unlike a thermoformed plastic stool that comes as a single piece, this wooden reinterpretation has to be assembled together. It doesn’t require screws or nails, though, making the assembly easier and the packaging simpler. It is, after all, supposed to be a more sustainable option to the plastic stool, and such an alternative would need to not only be made from sustainable materials but also be sustainable right to the very end.

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Furniture inspired by the Samurai Warrior armor comes with a similar tough corset wrapped around it

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What do Samurai warriors and tables have in common? Not quite a lot, I’d imagine… but for Mingdu Design, the two shared a potential visual overlap, resulting in the Paper Warrior series of side tables and coffee tables.

Samurais pioneered a new type of armor, that looked deceptively like paper, but was, on the contrary, rather tough and resilient. This ‘paper armor’ was wrapped around their torso, creating a tough shield of sorts that could deflect attacks while being both flexible as well as lightweight for easier movement and increased agility. It’s one of the many reasons which set the samurais in a class of their own, and the Paper Warrior series pays homage to their uniquely functional bit of fashion!

Designer: Mingdu Design

The tables, styled in longer pill-shaped variants as well as tall round side-tables, come with a distinct red fabric wrapped around their body. Rather than using the exact same kind of paper as the Samurais (which was made traditionally by specialized Japanese artisans), Mingdu Design opted for a similar but more readily available Tyvek paper by DuPont. Tyvek provides the right balance of toughness while shining just like the paper armor on a samurai would. It’s wrapped around the table the way an armor would be, and is cinched around the waist too!

The table’s underlying structure is made from wrought iron that’s been welded together. The iron has a distinct criss-cross pattern running around the middle, which the Tyvek clad conveniently exposes. This is a nod to the lace design found on the samurai armors!

“This series incorporates origami and weaving techniques and clothing design techniques for creation”, say designers Liang Chen and Yang Xueying of Mingdu Design. “We hope that in this semi-industrial and semi-handmade process, we can blur the boundaries between design and art, and put on exclusive armor for our samurai.”

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Rock-inspired Ottoman stools were also designed to be stacked and played with

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The origin of the Balanco stools is a rather interesting one. It was designed as a response to the pandemic, when the entire world was forced to stay at home. Putting home decor at the forefront while also giving kids (and adults) something to play and interact with, the Balanco set of stools takes its inspiration from rocks and boulders, giving you the ability to stack them in different forms and formats, creating art in the process. I call it putting ‘fun’ in ‘funiture’!

The idea for the Balanco stools came from the Japanese practice of stacking pebbles to create towers. While the pebbles mostly consist of rounded forms, designers Lisa Lai and Joel Wong decided that chiseled rock-like shapes would create more visual dynamism while offering a variety of flat surfaces that are ideal for stacking and layering. “As it requires significant patience and calmness to balance the blocks, it serves as one of the practical yet fun solutions for friends and families to enjoy with one another”, say Lisa and Joel. “When it is not used as objects for play, it doubles as stools and tables for adults and children.”

Designers: Lisa Lai and Joel Wong

Although boulder-like, the Balanco poufs are deceptively light, thanks to the foam inside them. The foam blocks are clad with sheets of felt that are stitched together with exposed edges that create the black lines on the boulders, giving them their chiseled, sharp, edgy appearance. This also allows the individual surfaces to remain relatively flat, so they stack on each other rather beautifully.

When not being used as toy blocks to create odd rocky totems, the individual Balanco stools can be used as seats, poufs, or footrests. Their uneven shape means you can orient them in a multitude of ways and height-adjust them accordingly. Although I don’t entirely endorse this, they’ll probably make for rather realistic-looking pillow fights!

The Balanco Stools are a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2022.

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The Winding side table doubles up as a stool and features an interesting ‘nose’

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If you’ve ever even remotely spent time in the design world on Instagram, then you’ve for sure come across Deniz Aktay. His simple, minimal, yet genius furniture pieces have slowly but surely taken the IG world by storm. The success of his designs lies in the fact that they’re oh so simple, elegant, and yet packed with massive functionality. The simplicity will almost make you wonder ‘Why didn’t I think of this?’, but unfortunately for us and luckily for Aktay, no one else can conjure these designs up except him. He’s created wonders – from a unique bookshelf that functions as a side table to a coffee table design with intriguing layers. And, we’re currently drooling over the Winding side table.

Designer: Deniz Aktay

There’s just something about a multifunctional piece of furniture that ticks all the checkboxes for me! Imagine a product that’s been designed to work as a clothing rack and a treadmill. Or a side table that transforms into a chair. Space-saving goals much? That’s the magic of a multifunctional furniture design. It looks like a single product, but functions as more than one! They’re a smart option for our modern urban homes, which tend to be pretty cramped, hence adding multiple bulky and cumbersome furniture designs to them isn’t really an option. But multifunctional pieces that serve a variety of purposes, and solve a bunch of unique problems can be a lifesaver in such situations. And the Winding side table is one such brilliant design.

This minimalistic and warm side table also doubles up as a stool. Aktay’s designs are infamous for doubling up as something or the other and doing so extremely subtly and smartly. The furniture piece is like a continuous piece of plywood folded and bent into varying angles. It artfully curves at the top to create a thick platform that functions either as a side table or a stool, depending upon your mood – whether you want to place your favorite vase or your bum on it.

The curve which is formed to build the main platform of the design is its most stark highlight. You can compare it to a ‘nose’, or you could in fact call it the ‘nose’ of the furniture design. The nose is made using multiple plywood shims to give the impression of a singular piece of plywood that although bent, still maintains a continuous and harmonious form.

The Winding side table has a compact size, which makes it ideal for our modern-day cramped homes, or even the ever-popular tiny homes. You can deftly slide the table/stool into any corner of your home, and it would seamlessly merge with its surroundings owing to its neutral and soothing aesthetics.

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Fluff Stack is a fluffy furniture set made from denim waste

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There are a few things in life that humans can never get enough of that aren’t food. These include furniture for living spaces and clothes for our bodies. Fortunately, these two classes of products are quite ubiquitous, mostly thanks to manufacturing technologies and cheap materials. Unsurprisingly, mass-produced products aren’t the most sustainable products, and even seemingly innocent textiles have their own dirty laundry, no pun intended, when it comes to the environment. There’s also the matter of wasted unused materials like scraps and overruns that are simply discarded, often at the expense of the planet. Finding a good use for these bits and pieces might not be that easy, but one such artist thought outside the box to turn denim waste into the unlikeliest of new products: pieces of furniture.

Designer: Lenny Stopp

Common fabrics are often dyed using processes and chemicals that tend to be toxic to the environment, making it one of the textile industry’s worst secrets. Simply throwing clothes could still end up harming the planet in the long run, but even their production can be problematic from a sustainability point of view. Some pieces of clothing or fabrics might be recyclable, but scraps and bits of material aren’t so easy to reuse because of their small sizes.

A better solution would be to use them as the base for something else that may not be directly related to the world of textiles and clothing. This three-piece furniture set composed of a side table, a stool, and a lamp is one such example, using denim waste not to simply cover the surface of the furniture as you might expect. Instead, the pieces of denim come together to form the furniture’s core and structure while also giving it a texture and visual that is truly one-of-a-kind.

The idea for Fluff Stack came from the observation that denim pulp is actually very strong. This new kind of material was made by putting denim pieces into an industrial pulp machine and then was mixed with cornstarch and water. The result was a material that looked and felt fluffy but had certain durability to it, allowing it to be pressed into molds to become more rigid shapes.

The ultimate test of the strength of this new kind of material is to use it for products that need to support a lot of weight or withstand rough use. Furniture, of course, is the perfect representative of such products, and, thus, the Fluff Stack series was born. Even without knowing the history behind these art pieces cum functional furniture, Fluss Stack easily captures one’s attention and interest. Rather than straightforward forms, the pieces are composed of blocks of solidified denim pulp arranged in a maze-like combination. The fluffy appearance of their surfaces also makes them stand out as if covered with fur all around.

Fluff Stack probably won’t become a common furniture design, but it does open the doors to what can be done with fabric waste. In an ideal world, nothing really gets wasted, and even scraps can be used as foundations for something else, forming a large part of a circular economy. And apparently, they can also look good, too, which goes a long way in making them attractive as functional decor or fancy furniture.

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