'Eco Stylists', Article published in idfx magazine by Robert S Silver
'The 'One' Design for Life', Article published in Interior Design Today July/August 2006 by Ella Drewett
Four Chairs - That Look Like They Know Where They Came From', Article in Woodwork August 2006 by Glenn Gordon
'Eco Hero David Colwell, Furniture Designer', Article in The Telegraph Magazine May 2007 by Ali Watkinson
'Inspriation in Auserity' Article published in The Financial Times September 2007 by Nicole Swengley
'The Chair - A Benchmark of Sustainable Tradition' Article published in Bridge For Design Autumn/Winter 2007
by David Colwell

Published in Bridge For Design Autumn/Winter 2007 Special Edition

‘The Chair - A Benchmark of Sustainable Tradition’

By David Colwell

“Global Warming is firmly on the agenda and there are plenty of other issues coming up to haunt us - poor diet, lack of social cohesion, violent crime, to name a few.  So, what’s that got to do with furniture design?  At first sight, very little, but historically, design has both reflected public aspiration, and more importantly, inspires cultural change.

There are obvious technical developments which define and influence cultural change - the internet and ipods for instance, which rely on recent innovation, and to some extent, what they look like is irrelevant.  (Yes, I know designers will hold this as heresy).  There is another category of object where there is innovation and material change, but the fundamental object is familiar, and changes are a response to the way we see ourselves socially and individually.

It is now worth remembering that we have got where we are now by design, we are here because we have devoted ourselves for generations to converting finite reserves of cheap energy and capital into things that people will buy, usually things that will consume more energy.  We are now seeing the side effects.

There are two approaches to sustainable design.  In one the idea is to make recycling of materials a priority and essentially carry on as before.  The other is to look at the process of making things with the intention of having as many benefits as possible.  Or, seen another way, to recognise that there is no such thing as a side effect: there are only effects, and to arrange for as many of them as possible to be positive.

Historically, the applied arts - maybe particularly chairs - have been benchmarks, projecting visions of the future.  They can cover both practical development (comfort, low energy production) and visual language - for example, the irony and wit of post-Modernism or the egalitarian values of the Shakers and the Scandinavians of the late 1950s and ‘60s.

To my mind, the demands of sustainability present a massive opportunity for life to be overwhelmingly more interesting in every respect.  They present not only the prospect of a materially sustainable future, but also an opportunity to build in social development as well.  This is the stuff of true design.

There is a long and noble tradition including Windsor Chairs, The Shakers, the early Modern movement, the post-war Americans, Eames et al, the Scandinavian tradition and Alex Isigonis’ Mini, where there is no style as such.  The visual language, the look, is part and parcel of expediency, the natural outcome of a practical, viable and socially acceptable (sustainable) way of doing things.

The Windsor Chair for instance, considered by many to be the first example of industrial design, is a brilliantly obvious way of making a chair.  Maybe the first chair conceived for people to sit on in some comfort.  In the West, what came before were not really chairs but thrones, objects to separate the rulers from the ruled.  The masses sat on benches or stools.

Windsor chairs combine a very ingenious structure, ease of making with very low tech tools, and in using fairly marginal timber, are well suited to the forests’ ecology and economy.

The Shakers worked in much the same vein, developing technology along with the visual design, limited only by the Shakers’ objection to comfort.  They invented the circular saw and, apparently, almost all mechanised agricultural implements until Ferguson invented the three point tractor hitch.

This isn’t a diversion - it illustrates the way relevant technical innovation and development of the visual language go hand in hand, making scant reference to existing symbols.  I, probably inaccurately, call this ‘vernacular’.

Classicism, Gothic Revival, post-Modernism, (and most other isms) do exactly the reverse by intent, though most of their iconic references derive from once practical expedience.

I confess that from my earliest recollections I have found the vernacular traditions so much richer than a styling job, be it Louis XVI or Philippe Stark.  And I, for one, am looking forward to the next.”




Published in The Financial Times September 2007

Inspiration in Austerity

By Nicole Swengley

For anyone who grew up with postwar British furniture and textiles, their new status as highly prized design icons may be rather astonishing.  But those sputnik-leg chairs, amoeba-shaped tables and atom-inspired fabric designs were burned into the collective consciousness of the baby boomers at an early age.  It’s only natural that, decades later, they would surround themselves with the same, familiar items, sparking a renaissance in work by designers such as Lucienne and Robin Day, Dorothy Carr and sir Terence Conran that is now embraced even by younger generations.

“Postwar British designs have been overlooked in the rush to buy American, Scandinavian, Japanese and European mid-century designs but we’ve started to see a significant shift in the past three years,” says Simon Alderson of London furniture store Twentytwentyone and curator of a new exhibition on British modernism at Circa, a vintage design show scheduled for this weekend.  “People are re-evaluating the designs because, academically and technologically, they are very interesting.  Their value lies in experimentation with materials and that element of British eccentricity that you don’t find in Scandinavian modernism.  And it’s the era that produced the world’s best-selling chair - Robin Day’s Polyprop.”

Francesca Galloway, a London dealer who recently held a successful selling exhibition of pre- and postwar British textiles, agrees.  “People who grew up with these designs in the 1950s and 1960s now have the distance to see how revolutionary they were,” she says.  In fact, even her catalogue sold out its first print-run.

The category becomes even more interesting when you consider that many of the designers are still alive and happy to discuss the stories behind their best-known work.  One of the most famous is Conran, 76, who created his first furniture range, Summa, in 1956 and launched his Habitat store eight years later.  His is ne of the great industry success stories but there’s no question that in the postwar period the idea of changing British tastes seemed an impossible task.   “People today don’t understand the austerity of the late 1940s.  You had to use ingenuity to create things.  I went to building sites to buy off-cuts of reinforcing rods to make table legs,” he says.

Persuading retailers to stock his designs was also a challenge.  “There was a wonderful woman called Betty Horne, who looked after the furniture floor at John Lewis in Oxford Street,” Conran recalls.  “She bought my tables for a fictitious couple called Mr and Mrs Stock, who always cancelled their order at the last moment.  It was the only way she could get the tables on the shop floor because John Lewis’ buyers wouldn’t take the design.”

Eventually, though, companies and consumers began to embrace the modernist aesthetic.  “There was an excitement about using new materials and an economy of tooling that resulted in a closeness between a design’s visual aspects and its manufacture,” says David Colwell, whose steel-framed Contour chair, designed for his degree show at London’s Royal College of Art in 1968, is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection.  “It was the combination of the ‘what’ and the ‘how’.”

The contour design “was technically very basic”, he says.  “I heated the acrylic in an air-oven and pushed a plank into it, letting the material have its own say in how it wanted to move and what shape it arrived at.”  It  required no post-production finishing and its curves created an exceptionally strong membrane within an evocative outline.

Colwell, now 63, reissued the chair which originally retailed at #15, in 2002 in a limited edition of 60 as a response to demand from collectors.  His current work is in sustainable timber because “I think we can do better than make chairs in plastic”.

He says he’s not surprised by the recent surge in demand for his pieces and those of his peers.  “Not in the slightest,” he says.  “IT was an age of optimism and enthusiasm - something we desperately need now.  There was a sense that well-being could be spread through a potentially classless society and the prevailing design ethos captured these ideas.  The designs we see now are altogether different.  They are not reaching for anything particularly noble and are much more concerned with sales.  Irony seems the main concern.”

The link between design and manufacturing blossomed in postwar Britain with retailers, such as Liberty and Heal and Son, working directly with designers such as Lucienne Day.  They also scouted for new talent emerging from art colleges, which is how Dorothy Carr, who studied at St Martin’s (now Central St Martins), began designing textiles.

“I’d got involved in screen printing because my partner  was working at the London College of Printing and we showed some designs at an exhibition in the late 1950s,” says Carr, now in her 80s and still working at her south London studio.  “Jack Worthington, who was in charge of Heal fabric designs, saw potential in my ink drawing of Sussex marshland.  He turned the image from horizontal to vertical and changed it from marshland to oak and printed it as fabric.  It was shown at the Brussels World Fair in 1958 and went into production and was also used as a laminated surface for furniture.  It’s now in the V&A’s textile collection.”

She also worked with Hull Traders - “Moire, a design produced in 1968 was possibly the first screen-printed textile made from a halftone print;  I still have the original mesh” - and Textra, which in 1971 produced Data, a dot-and-cross pattern inspired by some discarded computer tapes that her husband, Francis,  had found in the street.  “I wanted to animate the material and make it look alive,” Carr says.

“It’s fascinating to see how fashionable designs from the 1950s and 1960s have become,” she adds.  “But I’m not surprised because they broke away from their predecessors in all sorts of ways.  a lot of seminal design came out of that time.”

Her views are echoed by Lucienne Day, 90, whose abstract, modern-art-inspired textile patterns served as the perfect complement to her husband’s polypropylene chair and other durable, comfortable furniture, bringing fame to them both.  “My work was considered revolutionary [after the war] because it was so different from the arts and crafts work that had been popular for some time before.  I have met parents of now grown-up children who view my designs with nostalgia, having used them in their former nurseries or living rooms.  And [now] many younger people appreciate the simplicity and clarity, which suits the modern style in architecture.”

A less documented hero of the postwar era is metalworker and sculptor William Plunkett, now 79, who studied at Kingston School of Art after leaving the army aged 31.  “One of my lecturers, Adrian Duckworth, was keen to inject Britain’s furniture industry with new designs,” he recalls.  “I entered a Pirelli competition with a steel prototype, which the chairman of the judging committee said was a damn good chair but the length of the skid leg [the floor-level cross-bar] was too short.  The chair would topple over if you sat on the edge.  He said: ‘Do something about it and send it back as soon as possible.’  So I lengthened the leg, which altered the chair’s geometry, and it won.  I called it the Award chair.  This is where all my furniture designs stemmed from.”

Though he never worked with a big manufacturer, the Plunkett Plan modular furniture system, designed in 1968, remains in production today.  “I used aluminium for the base because it was more readily available than steel after the war.  The parts were fixed by screws, not welding, to reduce costs and I modified the design as the years went by and less hand-work was done on furniture.  Instead of polishing the aluminium, which was a dirty business, we began to etch it.”

His Coulsdon coffee table, made of steel sections, invisibly welded and  separated by spacers and produced by his own company from 1967 and 1978, won a Council of Industrial Design Award, as did his sculptural bent steel and aluminium Reigate rocking chair, created after his father-in-law heard he was going into metalwork and told him: “Start with a rocking chair because [US] President [John F.] Kennedy is keen on rocking chairs.”

Plunkett has his own theories about why modern-day homeowners have started to favour mid-century pieces over more contemporary ones.  “All this hand metalwork has now largely disappeared.  Today’s designs are compromised by mass production,” he says.

“You need very little furniture in your life.  My advice is to choose carefully and keep it for ever.”
 


Published in The Telegraph Magazine 5th May 2007

Eco Hero David Colwell, Furniture Designer

By Ali Watkinson

Although not obviously linked, the Mini, the Windsor chair and Shaker artefacts are, to the furniture designer David Cowell, all part of  ‘a tradition whose visual characteristics derive from the circumstances of manufacture rather than the other way around’.  Form follows manufacture as much as function, then.

His adherence to this rigourous approach has made Colwell a pioneer of ‘clean production’ and sustainable design in the 39 years since he graduated from the Royal College of Art.  The spirited 62-year-old believes that ‘for an object to be truly sustainable it must be sound from the raw material, through production, to lifelong use.  and if you can get the thing to work right within all those parameters, it has a good chance of looking good too.  But the most important aspect of a sustainable object,’ he adds, ‘is people’s wish to sustain it.  Comfort, posture and user convenience have to be taken seriously, but so does the ability to delight.  And my experience is that attention to all aspects of performance gives an inherent visual conviction.’

Through Trannon Furniture, which he established in 1978, Colwell has given the people groundbreaking, user-friendly chairs and tables made from steam-bent ash ‘thinnings’ - the young, self-seeded ash trees which are normally cleared to allow light into forests.  His distinctive designs have earned many awards and are held in both permanent and private collections around the world; the V&A in London has Colwell’s C1 Reclining Chair and Footstool, C3 Stacking Chair and Contour Chair.

Colwell works primarily with ash because ‘environmentally, wood stands head and shoulders above other structural materials; merely growing it has benefits; and ash stands out above all other hardwoods because it’s the toughest.  It grows particularly well in the UK and absorbs more atmospheric carbons than any other tree.’

For Colwell there is a social element to sustainable design that counters the ‘dumbing-down’ of mass production.  ‘Industrial designers usually reduce the labour cost while increasing perceived value,’ he says.  ‘So there is a tendency to substitute the labour cost - labour quality - for energy or material costs: plastic isn’t cheap.  I am trying to swap that around.

‘Steam bending is like cooking; it’s not foolproof.  It requires skill, but it’s quick, efficient and enjoyable, and makes good use of a craftsman’s time.  If we make things foolproof, we deny the opportunity for success.  Is that what we want for our children and neighbours?’
 


Published in Woodwork August 2006

Four Chairs
That Look Like they Know Where They Came From

By Glenn Gordon

One of the most interesting characters ever to make a chair of wood was the late Axel Erlandson, who, by carefully training and grafting the limbs of four saplings planted for the purpose, grew a chair right out of the ground.  Judging from a photo of Erlandson seated in the chair at his Tree Circus, a roadside attraction he created outside Santa Cruz, California, he seems to have been an odd duck.  That wouldn't make him much different from a lot of other woodworkers, except for one thing: he built with wood that was still alive, whereas most woodworkers build with pieces of trees that are definitely dead, either because lumberjacks killed them , or wind or disease or old age took them down.  By the time wood reaches our hands, it’s relatively inert.  Briskly practical and eager to get on with things, we just tend to regard it as stuff, not as stiffs, and keep consciousness of its origins off to the side.

But even dead and now dismantled into lumber, pieces of wood assert something about their past life as the  flesh of trees.  they continue to signal the forces and vectors of their growth.  Erlandson, in his strange but tuned-in way, picked up on these signals.  He understood how trees behaved...how their trunks and limbs took the forms they took - an understanding most clearly articulated in the statement by the early 20th century British biologist D'arcy Thompson that “structure is a diagram of forces.”  Carrying this idea further, you could say that a tree’s myriad “decisions” about its growth - which way it will bend, where it will branch - transmigrate to the next stage of its existence, and are in a sense reincarnated in the wood we build with.  The wood is dead, but it can still be used in ways expressive of and consonant with nature - nature more than whim, still being the basis of sound design.  this isn’t to say that a piece of furniture built of wood has to ape the look of its source tree literally, only that the wood it’s made of can continue to embody and express the forces that coursed through that tree.  The wood can still speak of what went on in the tree it came form.  It’s this understanding that informs the designs of the chairs made of wood discussed in this essay.  It’s integral to what makes them beautiful.

The chairs illustrated here were made by Wharton Esherick, Adrian Ferrazzutti, Stefan During, and David Colwell; their structural integrity is immediately readable and understandable.  The forces that will act upon them - all the expected stresses and strains - are clearly diagrammed through their forms and expressed without gratuitous ornament.  these are living forms, not exercises in empty formality.  They have little to do with styles of furniture where, in literal-minded mimicry of nature, the limbs of creatures such as lions, eagles, goats and dogs seem to have been lopped off and used for the legs and feet of chairs, chests and highboys with fancy pompadours.

I think that what makes me take notice  of a chair is the feeling that it sits up and takes notice of me.  Each chair here has a stance of animal alertness, a certain readiness - eagerness, almost - to serve its purpose.  It’s as if each of these chairs is waiting for somebody to come along and make it complete, no chair really being complete until someone sits in it.

The first chair ever to register on me in this way was one of Wharton Esherick’s, a side chair made to go with a dining table commissioned for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.  Constructed of thin, slightly tapered sticks of hickory, it’s all straight lines except for the detail of its filleted joints and the three congruent curved rails of the back.  The taut lines of this chair, its joints subtly suggestive of branching, have a vitality that seems generated by the hickory itself.  Esherick’s understanding of hickory’s strength in thin sections enabled him to create a chair visually as light as a line drawing (a printmaker before he became a woodworker, Esherick was known for the beauty of his drawing).  Its geometry is much more dynamic - and might also be stronger - than more mundane forms of side chair where all four legs come to the ground more or less vertically.  The rear leg is a strut angling emphatically back and down form a point midway along the side of the seat, terminating at the ground in a slightly hoof-like foot that’s shaped to strengthen the joint with the low side stretcher.  Triangulated with the seat’s side rail and the back of the chair, the leg braces the structure against the stress of a person leaning back.  It diagrams in a way convincing to the eye the vector of sitting down, showing how forces are delivered to the ground.  The side stretchers, so low to the ground, are like rods tensioned with turnbuckles.  I don’t know if Esherick ever tried dropping theses stretchers all the way to the ground - letting them become a pair of skids to give the chair a sled base that could slide on a rug or carpet - but he did build a few variations on his design.  Every version is irreducibly light but strong, intuitively engineered with animal feeling for the life in trees, some of them in Esherick’s own backyard.

The same feeling that animates Esherick’s chairs runs through an armchair by Adrian Ferrazzutti, a former student of James Krenov.  The chair’s slender frame, also of hickory, follows a structural pattern almost identical (if you discount the arm) to Esherick’s, which looks like it might have been its source.  Its thin sections similarly exploit hickory’s strength (Ferrazzutti also does the chair in wenge, a wood with similar characteristics).  The biggest difference is that Ferrazzutti uses bent laminated curves where Esherick used straight sticks.  The curves - the arc of the back leg leaping off the ground to meet subtly sprung curve of the front leg - are tremendously alive in the way they picture the loads the chair can expect.  The arm overlays and simply rests upon the end of the arc, sandwiching it to the top of that bowed front leg in a gesture that reflects your own arm resting upon it.  Most of the chair’s joinery is through-mortise-and-tenon, the protruding carved ends of the wedged tenons reading like the punctuation of an essay on structure.

I saw Adrian Ferrazzutti’s chair some years ago in a gallery in Mendocino but didn’t actually sit in it, so I can’t testify to the comfort of the leather seat and back slings.  The question of comfort leads to a design evolved by the Dutch chairmaker Stefan during.  Where Adrian Ferrazzutti forms the leaf-spring-like parts of his chairs with bent laminations, Stefan During takes an approach novel to those who get wood today only in the form of rectilinear stock from the lumberyard: he gets the major curves of his chairs directly from the trees.  During works with planks sawn from crooks and crotches whose readymade, structurally sound curves nicely coincide with (and may even be the origins of) parts of his design.  During also does a lot of steam bending, particularly of wide board of ash, elm, and beech, to form the backs of his chairs.  sitting in his earlier armchairs, he came to the conclusion that a continuous leather sling for seat and back wouldn’t be comfortable enough for the chair he wanted to build next, an armchair with a relaxed but decidedly regal composure, which he called the “Sfynx” (Dutch for Sphinx), as perfect a name for a piece of furniture as I’ve ever heard.

During’s “Sfynx” is so expressive structurally that it seems almost biologically alive.  Its stance makes it seem as though it is already its own relaxed inhabitant, and as though it could introduce the same aristocratic calm in anyone who were to take a seta in it.  The curves of the rear leg, the back, and the front post are like three deft strokes of a brush.  The rear leg, in a manner similar to Ferrazzutti’s design, springs forward and up to the post with the leap of a cat.  Reclining in the chair, your hands rest upon the paws of the “Sfynx,” the flared tops of the posts offering themselves also as handgrips to lever yourself out of the throne.  The forward reach of those paws counteracts the curve of the back just enough, visually, for some of the energy of the design to face outward and not be all slumped back within itself.  The “Sfynx,” with its enigmatic equilibrium of alertness and repose, is an embodiment of forces that play in the trunks and limbs of animals and trees.

Similarly, though in a more abstract way, the shapes of the four steam-bent staves of ash that form the back and legs of the ingenious “C10” side chair, by the British woodworker David Colwell, speak of the trees they came from.  They started out just as four straight boards, but rippling through them is a feeling that they actually grew in those shapes...their lines simply followed the path of least resistance.  Colwell has given close attention in this design to how the structure’s circumstances change as forces move along the chair’s carefully formed, variably thickening and thinning ribbons of ash, which is sawn from young, fast-growing, small-diameter trees, scantlings that yield wood ideal for the chair’s design.  The wood is resilient but strong, and the trees plentiful, their stock continually replenished through managed forestry in England.  the relatively narrow boards cut from these trees are steam-bent ) around fixtures pretty much like those shown in photos of Thonet’s factory of the late 19th century) with minimum waste of material and energy.  Colwell is seriously engaged with the ecology of his locale - his conviction of the necessity of sustainable design is the impetus to everything he builds.

The “C10” is an eloquently minimal design.  It makes shrewd use of a material that Colwell values and has therefore decided not to plunder.  A work great for structural candor, it lets go of traditional joinery, but not of structural integrity.  a simple steel “spider” of strategically bent steel rods attaches, tensions, and unifies the legs underneath a seat that ties everything together.  The thinning necessary to flex the steamed stave through the beautiful curve of the knee of the front leg quotes the way the tight curves on the underside of ash handles on baskets are drawknifed thin.  Continuing down, the leg thickens to a shape something like that of the calf of your own leg, getting meatier so as to have enough material to accept the strut that tensions and triangulates the structure.  the front legs are canted slightly outward and away from each other so that their axes can converge to form the twin tailbones that attach to the rear legs behind the chair’s seat.   Finally, there is the line of the rear stave: subtly bending in and out along its length, nowhere dead straight - it’s like something grown out of the ground.  It’s had a little help to get it to look that way, but so did the chair that Axel Erlandson grew from saplings.  If these chairs all seem alive, it’s because the four woodworkers who created them were all conscious of the trees that lend them form.

Glenn Gordon is a writer and photographer living in St. Paul, Minnesota.  He can be reached at ggordon22@earthlink.net.

Published in Interior Design Today July/August 2006

The ‘One’ Design for Life

By Ella Drewett

Chief ORen Lyons, a Native American leader, said: “I do not believe that the process of human life on this globe has degenerated to a point of no return.  I do believe, however, that we are fast approaching that point and we must redirect and correct our course in life to ensure health and a good life for the seventh generation coming...this legacy is passed down not to ensure the present but to guarantee the future.  Thinking of future generations is an enormous responsibility that requires vision.”

Sustainability, or more precisely sustainable design, is the watchword on everyone’s lips this summer.  Our planet’s raw materials, such as water, fuels, metals and minerals, are being used at a rate that can’t be sustained.  It has been estimated that if the whole world consumed at the rate of us Brits then it would take three planets to sustain us.  With the wealth of public interest in this issue, not to mention media attention and themed trade shows, it would seem society is beginning to realise that sustainability is the only feasible way forward.

There has been an increase in the number of industries looking to embrace sustainable design and interior design is one of them.  As an industry we are waking up to the impact that damaging materials have on out planet, as well as coming up with new and innovative ways to recycle what we already have to create something new.

Smile Plastics, a company who have sustainability at the heart of who they are, make sheets of plastic from recycled plastics waste.  they recycle anything from milk bottles to coffee cups, from bank notes to tough industrial material.  Smile Plastics’ sheets have been used extensively all over the world as furniture, shop fittings, work surfaces, bath panels, and screens, in domestic, commercial and office environments.  Colin Williamson Managing Director of Smile Plastics said: “The recycled plastic boards combine a strong environmental message with an evocative and distinctive aesthetic appeal, linked to the processing of plastics waste.”

Many of this years’s shows, such as Grand Designs Live 2006, had sustainability at the heart of their message, Kevin McCloud said: “Sustainability is an idea, a moral position even, which is creeping into every part of our lives.  This year we’re aiming to make the exhibition as carbon-neutral as possible, plus we’re unique among shows in asking all our exhibitors to provide a sustainability statement.”  Among the exhibitors were the WWF, the world’s largest independent conservation organisation and a major sponsor of the show, who crated a dramatic feature for the exhibition.  The feature reflected WWF’s ‘One Planet Living’ philosophy, to help protect the Earth’s natural resources.  Based on 10 guiding principles, ‘One Planet Living’ addresses the real and immediate threats to our environment and offers a practical guide to sustainable living.  WWF worked closely with Grand Designs Live to make this year’s exhibition as ‘green’ as possible.  As Grand Design’s TV presenter and WWF ambassador Kevin McCloud said: “sustainability has moved from being a fringe issue to something that touches every aspect of our lives.”  Also at this year’s exhibition, Kevin McCloud chaired the ‘Sustainable? Moi?’ seminar.  A panel of guest speakers, including Oliver Heath, the talented designer of BBC One’s Changing Rooms fame, joined Kevin to debate the issues surrounding sustainable materials, processes and planning.

If you missed the eco goings on at Grand Designs Live is coming to Birmingham, 6-8 October 2006 at the NEC.  For even more eco-friendly products and themes, you can visit Top Drawer Autumn at Olympia, which is on 10-12 September 2006.

It is clear that we have to be united as an industry and think about how we can ensure a sustainable planet for future generations.  What can we do to help protect the natural resources of our planet?

On the following two pages you will find the latest sustainable trends, provided by Trend Guru Nigel Carrier and an in-focus look at two companies who practice sustainability in their day-to-day business dealings.

David Colwell, Trannon Studio
www.davidcolwell.com

On the principal that an interesting answer is most likely to come from any interesting question, I designed this furniture with sustainability high on the agenda.  REally good design is about visualising a viable tomorrow.

For an object to be truly sustainable it should have minimum adverse environmental impact from the raw material, through production, to life long use.  Maybe the most important aspect of a sustainable object is people’s wish to sustain it.  If furniture is supremely comfortable and easy to live with, it stands a good chance of being looked after.

Wood stands head and shoulders above other structural materials.  Merely growing it has environmental benefits.  Of the hardwoods, Ash excels above all other trees for its toughness, and remarkably, the faster it grows the stronger it is.  It, along with Douglas Fir, also absorbs more carbon than any other timber, and it has no sapwood, so less wastage.

Steam bending is a craft where fast work is better than slow, it is very efficient and enjoyable but not fool proof, making it rewarding work for the craftsman.  It also seasons the wood whilst it’s being bent, using a fraction of the energy required for kiln drying.

The designs take these virtues and through an original approach to structures produce chairs and tables, which are strong, light, and comfortable with some positive impact on the environment.  Materials used to finish the product, are of course plant derived.

Sustainable Trends Prediction
Nigel Carrier - Design and Retails Consultant to the home and gift exhibitions, Top Drawer and Pulse

Genuinely new ideas are rare, new trends are often to do with a shift in focus or interest.  The environmental movement has been around for decades, but right now interest is at an all time high.  Everyone is claiming his or her green credentials from oil companies to political parties.

As far as consumers are concerned there is a definite interest in the tissue, but this is not the primary reason for purchasing a product, price quality and appearance are all more important.  Having said that, the idea that a particular item is produced in an environmentally friendly manner, is a strong motivation to buy.

In the past eco friendly and fair trade products have suffered an image problem, being worthy and dreary.  If the trend for eco products is really to affect the market in a big way it will be as part of a good overall package.  there is a huge opportunity for designers to explore materials that are surprising and exciting in their application.

An exciting example is Oliver Heath’s Company Ecocentric (www.ecocentriic.co.uk).  this mail order Internet site sells products that are sharp. modern and sophisticated.  This is all achieved with immaculate environmental credentials.

(article continues)


 Article featured in idFX magazine

By Robert S Silver

E C O - S T Y L I S T S

darcyturner.com T. +44 208 981 8307
Deborah Sadler T. +44 208 558 8062
guy-martin.com T. +44 1308 868 122
Jane Atfield T. +44 207 833 0018
trannon.com T. +44 1686 430 313
walesandwales.com T. +44 1825 872 764

© Robert S Silver, who wrote freelance for FX and idFX Interior Design Magazine UK published by ETP Ltd.