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.

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".

High tech cow stool

A stool called "Milk", made in ash tree. Could things get more nostalgic? If you ask the Swedish designer Staffan Holm the answer is yes. The stool he showed in Milan's Salone Satellite is not the handicraft piece it looks like, but rather the opposite. Look for your self, here's a film showing the production process.

Simplicity rally in Milan

1.Swedish style
2.French style

These days, a lot of designers are striving to come up with the simplest, smartest idea. According to the British journalist Alice Rawsthorn in International Herald Tribune utilitarianism will be the dominant style during the Salone del Mobile in Milan this week. But how far can you take simplicity? Swedish architects TAF will show this parcellike furniture collection at the design gallery Rossana Orlandi. And I like the idea. But I liked it even better the first time I saw it. Already in 1997 French designer Matali Crasset wrapped soft cubes into the kind of big shopping bags that immigrants in Paris use to carry things around in. Sometimes a simple solution is just too simple.

“We've got a chair, god damn it!”

It feels like paper, but is hard as steel. Swedish architects Claesson, Koivisto, Rune will launch a children’s chair made of pulp at the Milan Furniture Fair starting Wednesday.
Together with the Swedish forrest company Södra Cell and the research company STFI Packforsk they’ve been working on the chair for one and a half year. The material is a special pulp combined with PLA, a biodegradable plastic made from maize starch and cane sugar. In other words, a good alternative to plastic.
“Papuru” (the japanese word for paper) is durable and waterproof, recyclable, stackable and colourful. Now there's only the machine for massproducing it that’s missing... Look at films showing the production process here and here. (Am I spotting a new “production porn” trend here?)

Pine personality

Almost everything designed by Swede Daniel Franzén is made out of pine. Ever since he left design school ten years ago he has developped his preference for this the most Swedish of woods (except for spruce, ok, ok): not only did he design the barn houses for Arvesund that I recently wrote about, but other houses, bars and furniture. He even made a “self portrait”-chair made out of pine details exactly as tall and skinny as himself.
"Pine tree is soft and easy to work with. It smells good and I also like the fact that it's knotty. That way you can actually see it's made out of trees", he says.
Recently Daniel designed a table top out of the kind of turned pine tree columns that usually hold up the roof of a porch. He just splitted them up lengthwise and let the round part face the floor. And had this "patterned" table as a result. It's still a prototype.

Grand danois

Interested in the “how:s?” and “why:s?” behind furniture classics? Check out this site (in Danish), describing the processes behind products like the Ant by Arne Jacobsen, the PH-lamp by Poul Henningsen and the Panton Chair by Verner Panton.

Future proof furniture

“Wooden workplace” by TAF Architects started out as an exhibition concept for the Swedish office chair company RH-stolen. But who knows where it will end? TAF’s attempt to draw “a kind of comic strip-furniture so basic that nobody could take it seriously” ended up as one of the more interesting contributions to the Stockholm Furniture Fair. Raw pine plank, regular beams and screws. An open source-concept soon to be?

Shechair

Products “especially designed for women” usually makes me very sceptical. I’ve never been into pink razors with rounded corners. But the office chair “Lei” by Swedish designer Monica Förster is something else. It’s about using the woman as a norm. And it’s product development by the book. A collaboration between the designer Monica Förster, the ergonom Ellen Wheatley and the textile engineer Sandra Karlsson, initiated by the office furniture dealer Officeline. It’s their first try as a product developer, which doesn’t make it less impressive.
Women usually want to sit in a more upright position than men, prove the ergonomic studies made by Ellen Wheatley. It has to do with the fact that women have more tenacious muscles than men. To offer support to the lumbar vertebrae and the curve of the spine Monica Förster designed a part in the middle of the back of the chair which follows the body when leaning forward. The system is now patented.
The textile used is a polyester developed especially for the chair by Danish textile company Kvadrat. It consists of three different layers with air in between, which makes it both elastic and a good humidity transporter.
“Lei” might not win the price for most beautiful office chair, but for a woman 1, 68 m, normal weight, it’s definitely the most comfortable.

Dressing up for the Stockholm Furniture Fair

Making a new product by adding something to an old one is an often used theme these days. But that doesn't make it less sympathetic. Swedish designer Fredrik Färg combined it with his interest in well tailored fashion and it all turned out like this: ReCover is an old chair dressed up in a coat made by moulded felt. Not a bad idea at all, considering that the moulded felt in its turn is made out of felt fibres and old soda bottles.

Nobody's perfect

Nobody's a great idea. The chair Nobody, that is. Made out of mouldable felt, the chair designed by Danish-Russian duo Komplot Design and produced by Danish furniture company Hay, has caused quite a stir. Not only because it’s probably the first completely self-supporting textile chair that’s ever existed, and therefor light, sound proof and easy to recycle. But because it is something as unusual as a chair carefully created from fiber to product – in the same place.
The mouldable felt is produced in Halmstad, in the south of Sweden, by Nordifa, the same manufacturer that thermo-press the material into a chair. It contains felt fibres mixed with polyester fibres from old soft drink bottles and is a material that has been used for ages in cars luggage lockers and other such low- glamorous places. But nobody ever thought of using it for making a chair. Until Komplot Design, who had been collaborating with the Nordifa for a long time, happened to hear about the machine that can mould felt in the same way one usually mould wood… Now, that’s the kind of thing that would never have happened if the chair had been produced in China. The shape of the chair was born in the same minute the designers understood about the machine opportunity.
Swedish designers are now standing in line to work with the material. At the up-coming Stockholm Furniture Fair (Feb 4th-8th) there will be several new products in mouldable felt. I'll come back to this.