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.

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.

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.

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.

The Swan as we know it

You might think you’ve seen a lamp like this before. But you haven’t. “Disc”, designed by Dos Architects and produced by Örsjö, is not only the first electric fitting in Sweden, but the first in Scandinavia, to get the ecolabel The Swan. It is, of course, made for low-energy bulbs, and part of the metal and glass it is made of, is reused. “Disc” is also designed to simplify the process of separating the glass from the metal once it’s ready for the garbage dump. Or rather, once it’s ready to become a new product.

From plastic bottle to Nobody chair

In case you wonder how they did it. Click here.

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?

Masscraft carpet

Why chose between handicraft and massproduction? The Swedish designer Karin Welin paints with woolen fibre on industrial needle felt. The dry needling technique came up when she was experimenting at the felt producer Nordifa in the south of Sweden, and the result is a kind of carpet you’ve never seen before. Every carpet has unique patterns and the designer is involved in the whole process, from choosing which sheep to use to painting the carpets in the factory.
– The painting process is a fast one, says Karin, I work in the same way as a glass painter.

Image: The carpet “It’s Alive”, painted with wool from sheep at a farm outside Stockholm.