A tale of good chair for design

I spent  a brilliant day on Wednesday at the Royal College of Art, where students working on a project initiated by the American Hardwood Export Council are designing timber chairs that will be exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum as part of the London Festival of Architecture. They are students of product design not furniture students, so they are coming to the process with fresh eyes, and are enthused both by the potential of the material and by the challenge to consider the Life Cycle Analysis of their projects and make some decisions in accordance with that. They will be making their chairs at Benchmark, and logging all the materials and power that have gone into the making.
There is certainly no limit to their imaginations, with ideas ranging from a bench supported on the thinnest ply imaginable, to a floating chair, by way of an orthodox church seat and the lightest stool possible. If this project were all about enthusiasm it would already be admirable; what makes it fantastic is that the students are both engaging with the sustainability issues and facing up to, and overcoming, a range of technical problems that they have, of course, created for themselves. Just how do you stain timber with vinegar? How sustainable is a so-called bio-resin? How light and long can you make a bench? What is the best way to make an asymmetric folding chair? The results will be beautiful, quirky, clever, irreverent and mind-stretching. There are going to be some very exciting talents working in design in the next decade or so.

Life-cycle lessons from American hardwoods

Last night the American Hardwood Export Council presented some preliminary results from its high-level life-cycle analysis. Rupert Oliver of Forest Industries Intelligence, who helped brief PE International, explained that one of the benefits of LCA analysis is that it helps people make better, and better informed, decisions. For example, the results show that transport has far less impact on carbon dioxide generation than the amount of kiln drying. Thicker wood takes longer to dry and therefore generates more carbon dioxide. And oaks, which are slower drying, also generate more than other timbers.
Nevertheless, American hardwoods arriving in the UK have significant net  amounts of carbon dioxide locked up. The challenge for architects and furniture designers is to maintain that net balance - partly through the amount of energy they put into processing, and partly by keeping the material in as raw a state as possible. Recycling and burning of waste timber for fuel are easiest without added preservatives and glues.
The specific figures apply to American hardwoods, but many of the lessons apply to those working with timber in general.