Can you really furnish your entire house with cardboard? You most certainly can!
As the current green trend continues strong, people will keep coming up with new and interesting ways to help out the environment. One of the hottest materials, undergoing a makeover from trash to treasure, is cardboard. People are discovering what a useful and versatile material it is, and that furnishing your home with it is not as ridiculous as it may seem. Don’t take my word for it- check out the designers and their products below!
Your cardboard furnishings will sit well in your Corrugated Fiberboard House. Three students of Auburn University’s Rural Studio created this pod in 2001, to test the applications as building material of wax-infused corrugated clippings. Because the wax content prevents recycling, thousands of tons of this material is consigned to landfills each week (as opposed to the ease with which non-waxed cardboard can be recycled). This structure is still standing today and has stayed well-protected.
Reinhard Dienes is a German designer who offers some the more subtle sustainable designs available. Dienes cardboard bookcase comes in a variety of colors, and is available horizontally or vertically. This bookshelf is 100% recyclable and can sustain the weight of any number of objects placed on its shelves.
Leo Kempf is a furniture designer operating in the US, specializing in recycled materials, including cardboard. Inspired by Frank Gehry’s Wiggle Chair, Kempf’s products combine sustainability with clever design. His Speech-Bubble Coffee Table and Curve Gravity Powered Wall Shelf would be the talking point of any living room.
Considering that we spend 1/3 of our lives sleeping, the bedroom is to be spared no expense. The Swiss designed ‘Itbed’ is a stylish option, made from less than an inch thick cardboard, that is then sleekly folded in a zigzag accordion pattern, and sits low to the ground. It is also easily portable, making it an ideal choice for overnight guests or for frequent movers. Why not dress it up with this Cardboard Box comforter cover and pillowcases?
Rhode Island School of Design graduate Ian Gonsher designed a table from a single cardboard box. The simplicity of the materials needed allows for it to be scaled to fit any cardboard box you might come across, creating larger and smaller tables depending upon the size of the box.
Looking for inspiration for making your own cardboard chair? Designboom is an online publication of centered around the growing art of design. On the above page are some of the notable entries in a contest they hosted in search of a quality folding chair made out of cardboard.
Lazerian design studio is the brainchild of Liam Hopkins, an English “designer-maker”. His cardboard furniture range, including the Bravais Armchair and Radiolarian Sofa, incorporate an eyecatching honeycomb design, which are as recyclable as they are remarkable.
A beautiful home is incomplete without some decorative touches. Japanese artist Yuken Teryua carves delicate and detailed scenes out of cardboard toilet paper rolls and paper bags. Inspired by nature, these pieces are really beautiful whether sitting on your shelf or mounted on a wall.
Anastassia Elias has also reinvented the toilet paper roll, recreating real life scenes on a tiny scale within the roll itself. Such works like “School”, “Market” and “Grandmother” show her painstaking attention to detail. Her work is given an added dimension, in that it can be viewed from either end of the roll, and gives it a fanciful element.