What does cardboard furniture have to do with technology?
As prices rise for oil and raw materials (even sawdust), fans of furniture made from cardboard call it more earth-friendly and affordable than its wooden counterparts, which usually requires felling trees, or furniture made of pressboard, which contains toxic glues. It's also lightweight and can be packed flat for easy shipping.
Star architect Frank Gehry is known as the design pioneer in this realm. Between 1969 and 1973, his "Easy Edges" series of designs layered corrugated cardboard to create chairs and tables capped by a wooden layer for extra strength. Design schools regularly teach Gehry's forms.
Cardboard as a building block is slowly gaining in appeal around the world. The 2000 Olympics in Sydney featured cardboard furniture. In Hong Kong, cardboard is used for coffins.
Captions by Elsa Wenzel.
Credit: Vitra
In 2004, Gehry revamped his cardboard pieces for a new era. New versions of his chairs and stools based on the Wiggle design are sold alongside other modern furniture by Vitra. The company says interest in cardboard furniture is on the rise.
Bioplastics maker Cereplast, for instance, bought a Wiggle chair for its 'green' lobby.
Credit: Vitra
For its tables, desks and children's toy forts, Cardboard Design
creates die-cut shapes that ship in a flat box and are assembled like
puzzle pieces. No screws or toxic glues are involved. One piece of
furniture might weigh only about 5 kilograms.
The company uses mostly honeycomb cardboard, which bears enough weight that even companies that make shipping palettes are increasingly using the material instead of wood. This type of cardboard is made with kraft paper, which includes waste materials such as cardboard boxes, straw and newspapers. Waste from the manufacture of kraft paper is returned to paper mills for reuse. Not only is cardboard already made of recycled bits, but it's also recyclable itself.
Credit: Cardboard Design
Cardboard Design CEO Vahid Pourkay has a patent pending on what he calls "liquid cardboard", which can mutate into as many as 50 different shapes including vases, bowls and pen holders.
Henszey believes that cardboard furniture would be ideal for disaster zones in dry desert climates. To that end, the Red Cross has expressed interest in cardboard chairs. And although untreated cardboard furniture may not be ideal for outdoor furniture, Henszy said it would work well at weddings and other events.
Credit: Cardboard Design
French designer Eric Guiomar began sculpting furniture from discarded corrugated cardboard boxes 15 years ago and became enchanted with the material. Guiomar seeks out the giant boxes from windshields and other car parts from auto repair centers. Boxes housing equipment from printing shops also come in handy.
This image shows how building a piece of cardboard furniture from old boxes can be similar to crafting the hull of a boat. The result is light, yet deceptively durable.
Credit: Eric Guiomar
A group of Parisian designers calls themselves cartonnistes after carton, the French word for cardboard. Guoimar is involved with that group and is president of Compagnie Bluezen, where designers also use artisan papers, Lokta fiber from Nepal, newsprint and book pages, as well as cardboard.
There are at least 40 cardboard design workshops around the world, including in Europe, Israel and Brazil. Guiomar wants to help spread the design of cardboard furniture to the developing world, which he believes could benefit from the inexpensive material.
Credit: Eric Guiomar
At first glance, it would be hard to tell that this elaborate corner cabinet from the workshop of Eric Guiomar uses castoff cardboard.
Everything he crafts is nonpolluting because it uses nontoxic glues and water-based varnishes, said Guiomar, who leads furniture-making workshops in Paris and has written a book detailing the process. Interest is booming there due to ecological concerns, he said.
Credit: Eric Guiomar
Guiomar and other cardboard furniture designers emphasise the fun of working with a material that can be cut into nearly any whimsical shape. The silhouette of these drawers is inspired by actress Rita Hayworth's dress in the 1946 film Gilda.
"It would be much more difficult with wood," he said. "You are very free with cardboard."
Credit: Eric Guiomar
ReturDesign in Sweden sells this cardboard couch. Its online catalogue includes nearly every staple type of furniture -- even beds, cradles and coffins.
More than a third of the clients come from the United States and found the company online, according to Sergej Gerasimenko, who founded the company in 1992. He works primarily with used corrugated cardboard.
Henszey of Cardboard Design said she hopes to help develop such variety with cardboard furniture in the United States, which is about a decade behind Europe.
Credit: ReturDesign
The newest cardboard furniture designs are built to disguise the humble nature of their core material.
However, FedExFurniture.com probably offers the most notorious display of cardboard furnishings. Low on cash in 2005, software developer Jose Avila used FedEx shipping boxes to furnish his apartment in Tempe, Arizona, then uploaded photos to the Web.
However, FedEx tried to shut down his Web site, claiming it violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Avila's ISP shut down his site, but after fits and starts, it's been back up for at least four months.
On the other hand, serious cardboard furniture makers have suggested that their designs would be ideal for sharing online. That's because shipping expensive, finished pieces makes less sense than simply relying upon local workshops.
However, no open-source, Web-based design database appears to exist for cardboard furniture, such as the one created for buildings by the nonprofit Architecture for Humanity.
Credit: ReturDesign
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