What a waste

Students Petter Thörne’s och Anders Johnson’s easy chair Mold looks like a piece of art made by the Brasilian Campana brothers, but is actually ment to be massproduced in Sweden. Developed to be made out of veneer waste from different kinds of wood, it not only saves the waste from it’s usual destiny – that of being burnt despite it’s low energy value – but uses it in a much more constructive way: to make new furniture. By their work the designers have converted the disadvantage of the small format veneer-waste slivers into a constructive advantage that has facilitated the double-curved surface. And the variety of veneer in terms of wood type and format make each individual piece of furniture unique. Let's hope this chair will soon find its producer.

Made in the hood

There must be 1000 ways to work as a designer. Take the Finnish-Korean couple behind Helsinkibased designproducer Company for example. They chose a starting point very far from the usual international-designer-as-a-star-concept: they produce their own design and only work with local manufacturers. Aamu Song and Johan Olin talk about their ideas in terms of “seeds that make the local factories grow” and describe the “recipes” of 70 of their products in their “Company Cookbook”. Since 2008 they also run their own shop Salakauppa (the Secret Shop) close to the Kiasma museum of modern art in the center of Helsinki. The dancing shoes “Tanssitossut” for father and daughter are made of Finnish felt and rubber in Jämsä, Finland.

Puzzle furniture

By the way, “puzzle furniture” seem to be in every designer's mind for the moment. Here’s a Norwegian contributor: Petter Skogstad showed his all textile d i y-sofa "Hay" in Milan's young department Salone Satellite. And yes, it's inspired by hay piles. But the big question is: do people want to fit all the pieces together themselves? And do they prefer flexibility to commodity? After the age of 25, I'd say "No".

The question is "How?"

Nowadays it's not only the "What?", it's the "How?" that counts. How things are being produced luckily seem to become a hotter topic every week. Thanks to climate change YouTube can now add a new kind of film to their broad supply: production porn. In a few weeks time I’ve seen films about the production of the Danish chair Nobody, the Swedish chair Papuru and the Swedish stool Cow Stool. But production films are not always about high tech procedures. Form Us With Love’s “Man–size Mekano” is a kind of puzzle d i y-product with a production process you might as well visualize in a few images. But have a look anyway.