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Top 10 sustainable furniture designs to transform your home into an eco-friendly one

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2020 was a life-altering and drastic year, and 2023 is the year we get to redeem all our careless mistakes of the past and start living more consciously and sustainably. We cannot ignore the needs of our planet anymore, we need to take the environment into consideration, and what better way to start doing that than from our own homes? Sustainable furniture is taking the design industry by storm, they’re a step towards making our homes and our daily lives more eco-friendly and sustainable. They’re an attempt to cast aside toxic materials, and instead, add furniture designs to our home that won’t rot away on Earth for years once we’re done with them. We’ve curated a collection of furniture products created from cork, bamboo, and rattan! The options are endless, and the end result is the same – a greener, healthier, and happier Mother Earth!

1. 3D-printed Seats

Designed by Johannes Steinbauer Office For Design, these 3D-printed chairs are produced using additive manufacturing and are created without using fabrics, springs, and foam! And they still manage to be super functional and comfortable. These chairs utilize rigid parts, instead of the typical racks from chairs.

Why is it noteworthy?

The design is simple enough with four legs, a round seat, and a single bar at the back. But if you want to add other components like more racks or textiles, these can be added through 3D printing. The different parts are easy to assemble and disassemble and once it reaches the end of life, you can dispose of the different parts separately and recycle them accordingly.

What we like

  • Super easy to assemble and disassemble
  • Sustainable design

What we dislike

  • No instruction on having a space-saving version of this design

2. The 4PM Chaise Longue Chair

Comprised of flat and curved features, the 4PM Chaise Longue Chair is designed to create comfort out of hard material. Constructed in either Douglas fir or cherry wood, the only upholstered component of the 4PM Chaise Longue Chair is the leather headrest. Balanced on top of the backrest, Massproductions held the headrest in place with a steel weight.

Why is it noteworthy?

Massproductions is a slow furniture company, don’t let the name fool you. Since the furniture company only develops a few pieces every year, the ones that go into production guarantee a top-quality build and durable life span. Boasting an efficient, sustainable, and high-quality industrial production process, the company’s designers ensure the integrity of Massproductions’s vision. The company’s founder, Chris Martin, developed the 4PM Chaise Longue Chair to reinforce the company’s commitment to quality and produce an ergonomic, long-lasting chair for much-needed R&R.

What we like

  • Sustainable production and design process
  • Ergonomically designed

What we dislike

  • It doesn’t seem very comfortable to sit on
  • Space consuming

3. Vis-à-vis and Rendez-vous

I’ve realized that filling up your bathroom with thoughtful designs, only makes your time in it much more comfortable and smooth. And this collection of bathroom seating by Italian bathroom brand Agape strives to be exactly that! Designed by Marco Carini for Agape, the collection includes two seating designs created from recycled cork.

Why is it noteworthy?

The first design is called Vis-à-vis, and it is a light and sturdy stool that also doubles up as a tiny side table. The second design is Rendez-vous, and it’s a bench that serves as an extensive seating option for bathroom users. Both designs function as comfortable spots to sit and relax in the bathroom.

What we like

  • Crafted from recycled cork
  • The curving form resembles someone smiling

What we dislike

  • Not suited for bathrooms with a smaller footprint

4. The Chatpod 700

There are quite a few versatile options on the market when it comes to office booths, but have you come across the most sustainable one yet? Yup, called the Chatpod 700, this sleek and minimal office booth claims to be “the most sustainable office booth on the market”.

Why is it noteworthy?

Made entirely from recycled materials such as post-consumer cardboard, sawdust, rubber, and plastic bottle, the Chatpod 700 is quite proud of its sustainable composition, and with reason. Designed by Jeffrey Ibañez for Impact Acoustic, the office booth was ideally created for team meetings.

What we like

  • Built using recycled materials
  • Great space to hold casual informal meetings

What we dislike

  • Large space-consuming design

5. Listón

Listón is a modular shelving unit that uses a system of cable ties and wooden slats to form an endlessly re-configurable and sustainable furniture piece. The cable tie system allows users to create infinite configurations of varying sizes and shapes for essentialist shelving units that will look good in any room. Replacing hardware and tools, the cable ties systems provide secure fastening for each module that comes with Listón.

Why is it noteworthy?

With this in mind, many designers are approaching new furniture and appliance designs with sustainability being the driving force. Adding his design to the mix, architect, and designer Guille Cameron Mac Lean developed Listón, a new type of furniture system that uses cable ties and wooden slats to configure modular storage units.

What we like

  • The system of cable ties and wooden slats significantly reduces the amount of packing goods needed to ship the furniture system by 18 times in comparison to other flatpack furniture

What we dislike

  • The wooden slats and cable ties could break
  • Not the most aesthetic furniture design to add to your living space

6. The Plastic Translation Stool

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.

Why is it noteworthy?

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.

What we like

  • Doesn’t require screws or nails to be assembled
  • A more sustainable option to the plastic stool

What we dislike

  • Options to customize the stool are currently missing

7. Stackabl

More than just a collection of designer furniture in the form of chairs, lounges, and benches, Stackabl is actually a new system that mixes machine precision with human creativity. In a nutshell, a specialized configurator software analyzes choices made by a user or a designer, like colors or dimensions, and selects high-quality felt offcuts that are then cut by robots for use in making furniture.

Why is it noteworthy?

The demand for clothing and furniture upholstery has probably gone up in the past few years, as more people become more attuned to well-designed products. That means more materials are used for production, which unfortunately also means more scraps are left on the cutting room floor, quite literally. While some of these materials are biodegradable or at least recyclable, one design firm is putting them to good use to create furniture that not only looks comfortable but artistically striking as well.

What we like

  • Reduces carbon footprint while also enriching and empowering local economies

What we dislike

  • May not suit modern contemporary homes

8. The TAKEoSEAT

Folding stools are nothing new, but few actually try to hide the fact that people are carrying something meant to be sat on. In contrast, the TAKEoSEAT flattens down to something that looks like a large portfolio, or at least a stylish bag made of felt. You won’t look odd carrying it around, nor would the seat look out of place in an office space. Designer KRETHO positions this portable stool as a perfect part of an agile arsenal, allowing people to just pick up their seats and move around as needed. No more rearranging furniture or sweating over a heavy chair.

Why is noteworthy?

This folding design is admittedly not exactly novel, but what TAKEoSEAT adds to the table is a bit of environmental focus. Each stool is made from PET felt, which is felt comes from those plastic bottles that we use and throw away without giving a second thought about where they end up. PET bottles undergo a special process (that does, unfortunately, use up water and energy) that results in a material that feels familiar to the touch while also strong enough to support a load of 130 kg. Plus, the TAKEoSEAT itself is recyclable, too!

What we like

  • Created from PET felt
  • Extremely portable

What we dislike

  • Folding designs are quite common these days

9. The Stair Cubby

The Stair Cubby, as it was christened, can be assembled without the use of tools, with tabs simply going into slots and held down with pegs. The cubby is designed to sit on two steps of stairs, but the panel on the back can slide up and down to adjust to different stair heights. The storage has five open-access cubbies for shoes, books, and any other item that can fit inside, keeping things organized and out of harm’s way.

Why is it noteworthy?

Staircase bins need to take into account the particular shape of stairs, but not all stairs are made equal, so they have to be a bit more flexible or at least configurable. Given how in-demand these storage solutions might be, they also need to be durable and sustainable. These two product design students from Nottingham Trent University in the UK hit both birds with one sheet of plywood.

What we like

  • Can be assembled without the use of tools
  • Great for homes with space constraints

What we dislike

  • We’re not sure how well it would hold heavier objects

10. Rattan Stool

First impressions really quickly – did you think this was a whisk or folded spaghetti? I thought spaghetti but maybe I am just hungry. This rattan stool stood out to me because of its visually curiosity-evoking design. Is it comfortable? Probably. Is it cool? Absolutely.

Why is it noteworthy?

This stool explores the malleability of rattan as a material in furniture design, we are so used to seeing it in a checkered woven form that the noodle-like seating of this piece becomes a testament to how we can use often overlooked materials unconventionally to push boundaries. As the world moves towards a sustainable future, so must design.

What we like

  • Innovative use of Rattan
  • Quirky spaghetti-inspired aesthetics

What we dislike

  • It may not be comfortable to sit on for long periods of time

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Desk chair lets you swivel around to take a break

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For people who practically live in front of their desk or workstation, having something that’s comfortable and flexible is pretty important. I for one can sometimes spend almost six hours straight sitting in front of a screen in both my office desk and home desk. I’d like to take a break and read a book or write in my journal, but sometimes I won’t be able to stand up for hours. What if I had furniture that would let me relax just a bit while not leaving my space?

Designers: Yael Mer & Shay Alkalay (Raw Edge)

The Sui Desk Chair is an interesting piece of chair that can turn from a working desk into a casual chair where you can read a book or drink a cup of coffee with just a little swivel. It’s built to be a hybrid and multi-purpose structure. Even when it’s a desk, you still get some freedom of movement (at least in the physical sense) as the design brings you wide and generous angles, letting you have both private and semi-public spaces, depending on which way you want to swivel.

The swivel seat is attached to the desk itself which is a semi-circle-shaped surface. So when you’re facing the desk, you can put not just your computer or laptop but also your planner, snacks, coffee, books, and other stuff you would need to work or study around you. When you want to take a break from whatever it is you’re doing, just swivel around and pick up a book or meditate or just close your eyes for a few minutes and you can use the desk behind you as a backrest and the part nearer you as an armrest. You still have your other stuff within reach so no need to stand up (although you should get up every once in a while ideally).

The Sui Desk Chair also has an integrated power plug solution although this is an optional feature. And just like other +Halle products, they use wood that is “grown with respect for the land” and the metal parts are actually made from 99% recylable steel. I would definitely want to have something like this in my office although it would probably make my already sedentary lifestyle even more sedentary.

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Stack Collection offers raw yet refined contemporary furniture pieces and everyday objects

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Stack Seat Stack Stool

The Stack Collection is something those in Nordic or Scandinavian aesthetics will truly love. Ezra Ardolino definitely knows how to utilize wood. Precisely for this project, sheets of plywood were used to create beautiful furniture pieces.

There are plenty of pieces to choose from, but the Stack Collection will be more known for the furniture items like the stool, seat, bench, and table. The process used to create the pieces is stack lamination, commonly used in furniture-making. The method is utilized to stack CNC-machined and laminated FSC certified Baltic Birch plywood sheets for this collection.

Designer: Ezra Ardolino

Stack Collection Stack Bench

The laminated sheets are transformed into a block that is then shaped into whatever form is needed to be made by 3D-re-machining. The furniture piece or object is then assembled and then given a smoother finish. The Stack product line also now includes smaller objects that are ready for everyday use.

Stack Collection Ezra Ardolino Stack Stool

Stack Mirror Stack Tray

Timbur, the Digital fabrication studio behind this project, has introduced additional entries. There is the Stack Mirror, a tabletop, Stack Bubble cabinet, and a tray. The laminated stack products were recently showcased at the Beige room of Tuleste Factory. The STACK was one of the three major exhibitions in the gallery during the NYC x DESIGN Festival.

Stack Exhibition

Designer Ezra Ardolino’s background in architecture has allowed him to explore the intersection of materiality, design, and even robotics. He tries to combine these elements as he reimagines the fabricated world. The series is a collection of wooden products that are sustainable and pleasant to look at.

Stack Cabinet

With new additions to the Stack Collection, we doubt if the people behind it will ever stop creating more pieces. There are so much more designs and pieces to try, but for now, we’ll admire these stack-laminated items from Timbur. The original collection only features a stool, seat, bench, and table. Now there are smaller pieces to choose from as the possibilities are endless.

Stack Collection Designer

Stack Collection Stack Seat

Stacking sheets of plywood seems complicated, but the result shows beautiful craftsmanship, although the process involves machines and robotics. The Stack series tells us how design and technology can go together and be used to make something beneficial, creative, and innovative. Timbur has always been dedicated to fabricating a more sustainable world. The laminated stack products have been designed to reduce material waste and use natural materials like wood. They have their original function and purpose, but they also serve as stunning sculptural pieces that can be left on their own for the world to admire.

Stack Collection Ezra Ardolino

Stack Collection Stack Tray

Stack Collection Stack Cabinet

Stack Collection Stack Tabletop

Stack Bench

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Sustainable, beautiful and comfy chairs that are made from stacks of factory offcut felt

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Surplus materials and offcuts are often reused to create art pieces that try to send a message. A new system, however, tries to turn what is considered waste into sustainable furniture for the living room that you can actually use and sit on.

The demand for clothing and furniture upholstery has probably gone up in the past few years, as more people become more attuned to well-designed products. That means more materials are used for production, which unfortunately also means more scraps are left on the cutting room floor, quite literally. While some of these materials are biodegradable or at least recyclable, one design firm is putting them to good use to create furniture that not only looks comfortable but artistically striking as well.

Designer: Stacklab

How many ways can you cut felt to turn it into something usable? Apparently, there are a lot of ways, especially if you let a machine decide. More than just a collection of designer furniture in the form of chairs, lounges, and benches, Stackabl is actually a new system that mixes machine precision with human creativity. In a nutshell, a specialized configurator software analyzes choices made by a user or a designer, like colors or dimensions, and selects high-quality felt offcuts that are then cut by robots for use in making furniture.

With limitations set by this configurator, six designers from Maison Gerard set out to create memorable designer furniture that looks almost wasteful if you didn’t know they were made from factory surplus and offcuts. Each designer expressed different ideas and influences, resulting in wildly different designs.

The Raki corner chair, for example, exudes a spirit of play and frivolity with its uneven form and non-uniform legs, while Dulces dining chair might remind you of the cake it’s named after, especially one with a sweet pink filling in the middle. The Madame chaise lounge’s predominantly red hue and sloping “shoulders” make it look exotic, while the Maxine bench’s mix of design influences is just as varied as its colors.

In addition to reusing materials that would normally be thrown away, Stackabl also puts the power and choice into the hands of regional manufacturers and designers. By keeping in touch with regional sources for these materials and allowing designers from that region to exercise their creativity, Stackabl tries to hit two birds with one stone in reducing carbon footprint while also enriching and empowering local economies.

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This sustainable furniture collection is made from burnt cork!

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Have you ever made a bulletin board from wine bottle corks? I thought that was the most creative use of corks instead of throwing them away but obviously I am no  Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance! The French designer created a whole furniture set using burnt cork as the material and therefore the range is aptly called Burnt Cork. He uses discarded cork for the range, choosing different gradients and cork grain patterns to create a play between textures.

Sustainable designs often draw inspiration from nature and this furniture series is no exception. It is produced through the designer’s own Portugal-based studio Made in Situ and it celebrates the beauty of Portuguese landscapes which are abundant with cork forests. Cork is one of the most resilient natural materials. While the designer was driving through the Pedrógão Grande mountain region during the forest fires of 2017, he was thinking of the destruction, and during that he had the “Aha!” moment of using burnt cork as a material. A year later, he visited a traditional cork manufacturing company where he discovered various cork processing techniques which included the waste material from the fires – literal burnt cork!

Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance spent two years on research and development before giving second life to the waste cork. The furniture set is an homage to the resilience and beauty of this sustainable material. Burnt Cork is crafted using a blend of traditional and modern techniques resulting in organic forms with curved lines that give it a unique sculptural aesthetic. Every design highlights the dichotomy of the rough and fine cork textures.

The limited-edition set includes a dining table, two low tables, a lounge chair, a dining chair, a chaise longue, and a stool. Each piece has a base with a bark-like texture that then transforms into a fine grain surface at the top. The chairs showcase ergonomic silhouettes that promise comfort while the tables feature architectural elements. Cork is an underrated sustainable material that finally got a chance to shine through design in the Burnt Cork furniture set.

Sustainable furniture designs that replace the mass produced plastic designs and make our homes greener!

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2020 was a life-altering and drastic year, and 2021 is probably our chance to redeem all our careless mistakes of the past and to start living more consciously and sustainably. We cannot ignore the needs of our planet anymore, we need to take the environment into consideration, and what better way to start doing that than from our own homes? Sustainable furniture is taking the design industry by storm, they’re a step towards making our homes and our daily lives more eco-friendly and sustainable. They’re an attempt to cast aside toxic materials, and instead, add furniture designs to our home that won’t rot away on Earth for years once we’re done with them. We’ve curated a collection of furniture products created from cork, bamboo, rattan, and even orange peels! The options are endless, and the end result is the same – a greener, healthier, and happier Mother Earth!

Rattan is an eco-friendly natural material that is usually used in the creation of baskets or furniture, especially chairs. It is sustainable and resilient which makes it an exceptional wood that renews in just 5-7 years. Designers love rattan for creating furniture because the manufacturing is low-tech and the production process usually involves crafting by hand or using facilities that do not negatively impact the environment. Rattan is also an easy material to mold physically and creatively to fit your idea, it accepts paints and it can be worked into many styles. Moreover, the inner core can be separated and worked into wicker – talk about reducing waste! This stool explores the malleability of rattan as a material in furniture design, we are so used to seeing it in a checkered woven form that the noodle-like seating of this piece becomes a testament to how we can

Vadim Kibardin decided to give an innovative, sustainable twist to it and designed furniture from paper. Why is his furniture a piece of art? Well, he has spent 5,110 hours making it by hand! Every piece of furniture that Kibardin makes is one of a kind, there is no mold and he shapes them all himself. We are now moving towards a sustainable lifestyle but Kibardin has been doing this for over 25 years – he has successfully recycled 2000 pounds of cardboard which is equivalent to saving 17 trees. To put it into perspective, 17 trees absorb 250 pounds of carbon dioxide each year and we need to ramp up the materials we use in design so that they serve a functional purpose while also contributing to slowing down the climate crisis.

Architect, designer, and creative director – José Manuel Carvalho Araújo who Graduated in architecture from the architecture schools of Oporto and Lisbon, Carvalho Araújo, has a keen eye for product design, making him a well-renowned name in his spheres. His simple yet highly useful chair design christened Tumble is the perfect example of intuitive product design that is well-tailored for ultra-modern interiors. It is essentially a platform that serves as a chair, side table, bench seat, storage unit, bookshelf, center table, or lounger. Depending on the nature of use and the available interior space, Tumble can be put to good use with a bit of creative thinking. The furniture piece is crafted out of natural agglomerated cork and natural oak, making it good for the environment too.

Broom is the ingenious result of a design collaboration that both avoids and eliminates waste. It is made from a compound of industrial waste from lumber factories and industrial plastic plants – 75% waste polypropylene and 15% reclaimed wood that usually ends up in the trash. It checks all the boxes for sustainable furniture with its three-fold environmental impact – less energy, less waste, and less carbon. “With the Broom chair, it is about less and more. We chose less – less “style”, less “design”, less material, less waste, less energy. And so, the Broom chair became so much more,” says Starck when talking about the design process to make a chair that does more than being a surface to sit on.

knot_chair_layout

knot_02

Simple? Check. Sustainable? Check. Stunning? Check. The Knot chair will check all your boxes when it comes to a stool-style seating solution. The structure is made almost entirely of beautiful, eco-friendly bamboo. The natural material is bent using a unique crisscross weave that reinforces its natural strength and creates an exquisite, sculptural aesthetic. Lightweight, long-lasting, and integrable into a variety of styles, it’s sure to be a timeless addition to any interior.

“Unlimited imagination and unimaginable needs of people could be contradictory to the limitations of our planet and our capacities as human beings. The consumption patterns we have adapted have led to global warming, polluted air, soil, and water while putting pressure on people, both in working conditions and a psychological obsession to gain more without answering the real needs,” says designer Ariyan Davoodian on what inspired him to create modular furniture for every space. The aim was to reduce the unnecessary (and constant) buying by using creativity and sustainable development to meet our furniture needs that also work for our environment. Un-Lim is an ageless collection that can be molded and changed over time – think of it as redesigning your own furniture using the same pieces to create a whole new form and function! It comes with 8 different parts that you can combine to match your space and needs. Turn it from a bed to a table to a chair seamlessly. The separate modules come with a notebook that tells the story of its production timeline from the furniture’s point of view! It also includes a piece of wood from the tree that was used and a shoutout to all wood craftsmen who worked on your set.

Looking to make a switch to a sustainable lifestyle in 2020? Meet the Dot Collection – these modern pieces are made from the waste produced during manufacturing furniture. This group will keep with the aesthetic of your space while also allowing you to continue reusing, reducing, and recycling. The Dot collection includes a set of chairs, bench, and side table that all come in subtle earthy colors with a combination of cool and warm. The inspiration for this modern sustainable set was a factory visit where the Studio Pesi team noticed a lot of leftover material.

OTTAN Studio is completely obsessed with sustainable designs, and they’re implementing an innovative method to create them! They’ve been transforming orange peels, cut grass, carrot pulp, fallen leaves, and nutshells into design objects. These products range from tiles to tables and even include lighting designs. The OTTAN coffee table is one of their unique pieces (and also one of my favorites) created from expired lentils and cut grass! Carrot pulp, orange peels, and artichoke leaves were used to make the lamp within the table.

The SMĪLE, which is a part of the ChopValue catalog, uses a raw material that there’s an abundance of – used chopsticks. These chopsticks undergo heat, steam, and pressure processes to create a new engineered material, thus giving them a new lease of life that’s much longer than what they were originally intended for. The SMĪLE shelf is a modular system that relies on recycled steel frames that fix to a wall, holding shelves in between. The steel frames can be arranged practically in any orientation and arrangement, giving you the freedom to create your own shelving design that can even be expanded if you want to, in the future! Depending on the size of the shelf you buy, it comes with the recycled steel frames and ChopValue’s signature chopstick shelves. Each shelf uses hundreds of bamboo chopsticks, compressed together to create a unique looking material with its own bespoke grain-pattern.

When you think eco-friendly, aesthetics is not the first thing that comes to your mind. Most of us will be stumped if we are asked to name three chic eco-friendly products to use daily, but Andrea Juhasz has created an entire interior space that is not only stylish but completely eco-friendly – above recycling and beyond sustainability. Let’s take a look at the details of what makes for a beautiful environment inside our home while protecting the one outside it. Sustainable and eco-friendly materials were used in every aspect of the house – right from flooring with corkwood and bamboo to using jute and coconut fiber carpets without compromising on the visual design. These natural elements in your home can reduce pollution and they are also anti-allergic and antistatic.

This sustainable furniture is made from 2000 pounds of recycled cardboard

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When you think of furniture, you think of pieces made using the most traditional materials. We are conditioned to associate furniture primarily with wood, plastic, and metal so when we see products made from anything else it leaves us in awe. Vadim Kibardin decided to give an innovative, sustainable twist to it and designed furniture from paper. Why is his furniture a piece of art? Well, he has spent 5,110 hours making it by hand!

Every piece of furniture that Kibardin makes is one of a kind, there is no mold and he shapes them all himself. We are now moving towards a sustainable lifestyle but Kibardin has been doing this for over 25 years – he has successfully recycled 2000 pounds of cardboard which is equivalent to saving 17 trees. To put it into perspective, 17 trees absorb 250 pounds of carbon dioxide each year and we need to ramp up the materials we use in design so that they serve a functional purpose while also contributing to slowing down the climate crisis. Using sustainable construction materials like paper and turning it into furniture that is stylish, modern and eco-conscious is the future of long-lasting interior design.

Usually, sustainable furniture is all bamboo and cork, and the earthy tones may not fit everyone’s taste but this paper furniture certainly provides an upscale alternative. Earning praise from renowned global creators including Japanese industrial designer, Naoto Fukasawa, Kibardin’s work shows that you can use a ‘weaker’ material like paper to build a sturdy table or a durable accent chair. He has a Black collection and Totem collection along with many commissioned pieces that are housed in galleries, museums or homes of art collectors.

Designer: Vadim Kibardin

Architecture legend, Bjarke Ingels, ‘pivots’ their couch towards the future of flexible living

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Bjarke Ingels is a movie star of the architecture world, but he is also an artist and a trailblazing source of inspiration that goes beyond the structures he builds. A decade ago he started spreading the word on his philosophy of sustainable hedonism which bridges the gap between environmentalism and luxury – they can coexist and Ingels showcases that in his work. What sets him apart is that everything he creates has drawn inspirations from ideas, things, art and even games that are totally unrelated to what he is building but still shines through subtly. The latest example to prove this point is the Voxel sofa for a Danish brand, Common Seating, which is a harmony of elements from Minecraft (which Ingels loves!), Q*bert video games as well as the work of Modernist architect Mies van der Rohe.

The Voxel sofa is, in the simplest words, made to adapt to the environment and the user’s needs. Bjarke Ingel’s firm, BIG, looked into how they design their architectural projects like their Lego House, 79 & Park apartment block and the 2016 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion when creating the modular sofa system. The team made a grid of pixel-like blocks to form the seats and called it Voxel. The name and aesthetic of the sofa come from the word’s actual meaning which is a graphic and interface design term for ‘3D pixel’. Voxel will look and mean something unique to every individual user and space.

Voxel can be moved, repaired, flipped, added on to or reduced with ease based on its surroundings. It represents the future of modern furniture – pieces designed to serve the user with multiple functionalities with a form that fits in every room. The sofa system is built with four major parts – armrests, backrests, seats, and legs, and all of these can be interchanged and assembled in multiple ways.  The pieces connect with simple metal cylinders that slide into holes and give it its modular essence. “The grid-like system creates a family of units that can be configured into multiple seating scenarios, from single-unit couch to large configurations,” says Jakob Lange, partner at BIG. With the rapid evolution of our culture and lifestyle, Voxel has the ability to mold itself organically to any ecosystem.

The sofa’s design reduces waste by encouraging owners to exchange or repair separate parts if needed, instead of throwing the entire piece out. Voxel is made on-demand and shipped directly from the workshop to ensure it only produces what is necessary and manages waste responsibly. Voxel promotes Bjarke Ingel’s idea of flexibility and sustainable living in its own didactic message of being able to modify and adapt to where we are in the moment with our core values intact. Lang goes on to say, “If it were a person, [it] would be able to move, flex and adapt to different configurations, making it agile in any environment – at home or at work – and responsive to any individual. The person can really grow and live with this sofa long-term.”

Ingels has always viewed architecture as the art and science of making things that fit the way we want to live our lives, it is a constant evolution of ideas. I’ll leave you with this thought inspired by Bjarke Ingels – sustainability is not a moral sacrifice but a design challenge and we have the tools to design ecosystems that optimize the flow of people, resources, economies even…so why not give back with the power to create?

Designer: BIG Group

Phillipe Starck’s Broom – A sustainable chair that swept away industrial waste like magic

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Here is some food for thought – what if our leftovers could be turned to functional furniture that looked food? I mean good, that looked good! Phillipe Starck is a French designer which means he eats really good food and has managed to turn the leftovers into some really good chairs called the Broom for Emeco. Global food waste (aka leftovers) is twice as high as predicted reports CNN but leftovers don’t necessarily mean just food – it is any waste that ends up in the trash and the solution to waste management lies in creative, sustainable design. The Broom is a fine example of just that! Recycled, recyclable and designed to last – this is where rubbish becomes responsible.

The relationship between Phillipe Starck and Emeco is what turned the company from just a US Navy supplier to a coveted furniture design brand. “Working with Emeco has allowed me to use recycled material and transform it into something that never needs to be discarded – a tireless and unbreakable chair to use and enjoy for a lifetime,” says Starck who believes every creator has a duty to the society. Emeco uses recycled aluminum, recycled PET, reclaimed wood polypropylene, eco-concrete, and cork. In fact, the Broom chair is made of 90% reclaimed waste polypropylene and wood fiber that would normally be swept into the trash – hence the name!

Broom is the ingenious result of a design collaboration that both avoids and eliminates waste. It is made from a compound of industrial waste from lumber factories and industrial plastic plants – 75% waste polypropylene and 15% reclaimed wood that usually ends up in the trash. It checks all the boxes for sustainable furniture with its three-fold environmental impact – less energy, less waste, and less carbon. “With the Broom chair, it is about less and more. We chose less – less “style”, less “design”, less material, less waste, less energy. And so, the Broom chair became so much more” says Starck when talking about the design process to make a chair that does more than being a surface to sit on.

The Broom comes in 6 colors, can be stacked easily, perfect for outdoor use and very low maintenance (honestly, just clean with soapy water and wipe with a soft cloth).  The wood particles create a speckled texture that gives the surface a warmer, more natural touch, each chair will have its own unique textured pattern. Wood is good, polypropylene is not so good, but the combination made from the two gives us a material that lasts like synthetic but has the spirit of nature. This is sourced from woodshops and plastic producing worksites, it is then cleaned, compressed and transformed into a wood composite that works for the environment instead of harming it.

“Imagine”, says Philippe Starck, “a guy who takes a humble broom and starts to clean the workshop and with this dust he makes new magic” and we bet JK Rowling will agree that brooms are truly magic.

Designer: Philippe Starck for Emeco.

Manufacturing waste repurposed into a furniture collection your home needs!

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Looking to make a switch to a sustainable lifestyle in 2020? Meet the Dot Collection – these modern pieces are made from the waste produced during manufacturing furniture. This group will keep with the aesthetic of your space while also allowing you to continue reusing, reducing and recycling.

The Dot collection includes a set of chairs, bench, and side table that all come in subtle earthy colors with a combination of cool and warm. The inspiration for this modern sustainable set was a factory visit where the Studio Pesi team noticed a lot of leftover material. After a linoleum board is cut, the pieces are usually wasted and the goal behind the Dot collection was to make something functional and minimal enough for it to fit with any interior style.

The chairs, bench, and side tables are made with off-the-shelf solid wood cylinders and the linoleum board leftovers so sustainability is truly in the bare bones of their structures. The linoleum board leftovers provide for a soft and warm surface on the top of the furniture. The joints between the two materials give the Dot collection its unique image and name.

If I were to name each piece of the collection individually, I would call them Reuse, Reduce and Recycle.

Designer: Studio Pesi