Award

For this studio project, I decided to try to win the Green Concept Award in the Interior & Lifestyle category.

The Green Concept award is closely related to the Green Product Award, but is aimed at products that are not yet on the market. It offers support in many ways and expert jury feedback for applicants.

Analysing the briefing, past winners and the jury members, there seem to be a few things that a concept needs to be successful at the GCA. Firstly, the concepts whole life cycle should be thought through and it should make sense environmentally in not only one superficial aspect. Especially nowadays, where greenwashing is everywhere. Also, it appears that some of the jury members value the concept's market potential a lot and recycling is obviously another ambiguous criterion. It can be seen in almost all the winning projects. Lastly the way in which the sustainability is communicated with potential customers seems to play a key role.

Based on these findings, the strategy was to come up with - obviously - an environmentally friendly solution, using the help provided by the award. The first crucial step to making progress were meaningful material studies to then design an object that takes the findings into account. Work with the materials strengths and turn the weaknesses into a unique selling point!

Process

Very early on the idea came up to make bent wood furniture without using glue. Usually wood is bent by forcing wood plies into shape and then gluing them together, but most industry standard wood glues are synthetic. This mixture of organic and synthetic material is impossible to break apart after the product's end of life and therefore neither the organic nor the synthetic compounds can be returned to their material cycles. Instead, they end up in a landfill or being burned.

Using an alternative way to connect the plies could make them easily separable and therefore recyclable. This also opens the opportunity to send the machined parts to the customer in a very flat and efficient package for them to assemble at home.

The following images show the process from experimenting with screws and nails amongst others, over the final interlocking system and designs for it, to the wood sheets that a customer might receive.

Product

As you can see the product meant to showcase the unique qualities of this technique does not come too close to the visualisation that you saw from the process.

For financial reasons it was built at a smaller scale and it was hand made on the table saw because the sheets were too big for the CNC. These two factors in combination made for one of the bends not go as planned.

The sheets have been cut apart and some glue has been used. The shape was a bit too complex and because of the smaller scale, the radii were smaller than they would have been in a 1:1 scale.

Ignoring all that and all the painter's tape, the images show that it is possible and that this technique creates a very nice aesthetic at the edges.

Reflection

The concept is obviously not yet ready to be used, but the prototype provides valuable insights and is a bit of a teaser of what it could look like. More time is needed to make this ready to implement in production. Also, the lacking availability of wood (without any glue) in hardware stores made it very difficult to even start experimenting.

What needs to be improved:

• The sheets need to be divided into pieces that can easily be bent.

• A connecting mechanism for these sheets needs to be found.

• The accuracy when making the sheets by hand is not good enough, so a CNC should be used.

• The dimensions and the construction of the CAD still need to be tweaked for optimal usability.

I am confident that with some more work, this technique will become feasible and user friendly. Sending these plies in a flat package is more efficient and therefore less harmful for the environment than it would be if you sent the regular bent plywood furniture. Using only wood makes the piece completely biodegradable and not have to end up in a landfill after its end of life.

Second Prototype

Between our final presentations and the DDS, I spent my days in the wood and metal workshop to build a second prototype for the exhibition.

The shape is simpler and the overlapping panels ensure more stability in the shape. The metal brackets make the shape more stable and allow for the legs to be attached.

Below, you can find some pictures taken in the workshop. Better quality ones will follow!