Series One by Another Country

English furniture company Another Country launched their inaugural collection at The Tramshed as part of the London Design Festival last month.

The first series features ten wooden items, including stools, tables and benches, made at the firm’s workshop in Dorset, UK.

Designs are inspired by a mixture of British vernacular, Shaker, Scandinavian and Japanese woodwork.

See all our stories about the London Design Festival »

The information below is from Another Country:

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A New Furniture Brand

Another Country makes contemporary craft furniture. Our designs are archetypal, calling on the familiar and unpretentious forms of British Country kitchen style, Shaker, traditional Scandinavian and Japanese woodwork. It is the spirit and functionality of these honest forms of furniture that Another Country endeavours to re-interpret for a modern customer.

Another Country aims to deliver quality and longevity at fair prices – our products are built to last, both in terms of construction and style, and are sold direct to the consumer via its website.

Another Country’s products are made from solid wood and produced by hand in a small workshop in Dorset, England.

Series One

This first collection from Another Country is as clear and simple an interpretation of our intention as we could manage. We have taken familiar forms of craft furniture and pared them back to their most basic elements and made them using the most efficient workshop techniques and the best quality wood. This is our Series 1.

Collection

The launch collection is made up of ten pieces: a stool, a bar stool, a bench, a coffee table, a console, a dining table, a daybed and a kids’ stool, step and table. In addition we produce a limited edition ash stool and bench for Monocle Magazine and an accessory peg rail.

Bob by Hella Jongerius for Kettal

Dutch designer Hella Jongerius has created a range of conservatory furniture for Kettal featuring aluminium frames wrapped in cord.

Called Bob, the collection includes a chair, foot stool and side table.

See all our stories about Hella Jongerius »

Here are a few details from Kettal:

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HELLA JONGERIUS CREATES KETTAL BOB

Hella Jongerius has designed a garden club set for Kettal called Bob: a new take on the traditional garden club chair.

The dark aluminium frame lends solidity to the front, while the back is noteworthy for its elegant light construction. The seat consists of large, soft rods, highlighted by visible stitching.

The details on the armrests and Bob footstool handles and side table use cord.

The Collection is composed of a relaxer chair, footstool and side table.

SitTable by UNStudio for Prooff

At Interieur 2010 in Kortrijk this week Amsterdam architects UNStudio present a set of two tables that incorporate upholstered seats.

Called SitTable, the design for Dutch brand Prooff comes in oak with one seat or a longer version in white with two seats.

The slab-like tops are supported by a network of steel rods.

See all our stories about UNStudio »

Photographs are by Roel van Tour and Pim Top.

Here are some more details from UNStudio:

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SitTable , PROOFF, 2010

Sit down, sit up, lounge, hang, repose, move, work, read, consult or relax. Alone or together.

People communicate in a variety of ways. The design for the SitTable caters to the needs of these divergent varieties. It allows for the table to become a thinking place as well as a social meeting ground, whilst offering a diversity of options for functionality.

It may become a quiet reading table found in a library, or a work and relaxation place located in an airport lounge. It could simply be used in a waiting room, in a front office or in a school. It may also act as a meeting space for exhibitions or in shops. Whichever role it fills, everyone is given the opportunity to discover their own practical use for the SitTable. It is designed to serve one’s own intended purpose for functionality and arrangement.

The hybrid form of the SitTable combines two pieces of multi-functional furniture, offering a variety of space-creating authority to the user. Numerous tasks can be carried out simultaneously at the SitTable – both solitary and social, or a combination of the two.

Ben van Berkel: “The SitTable is designed for the various ways in which people communicate. Through a cross combination of usage possibilities, it extends the traditional role of the table as a social meeting place.”

UNStudio has long been interested in hybrid forms of all scales, from large scale mixed-use urban projects through to programmatic and volumetric transitions in public buildings and private residences. A similar approach is often taken to products designed by the studio, where hybridisation offers increased performance potential to a wide variety of users. The SitTable is a new addition to this family of designs.

Client: PROOFF

Materials/dimensions:
SitTable Type 1 (pictured):
tabletop: wood veneer, dark oak A32 – Morado
fabric seat: Divina 462 ( mustard yellow )
frame: steel C3, Anthraciet Grey
l x w x h: 3800 x 1750 x 750mm.

SitTable Type 2 (pictured):
tabletop: white HPL, white veneer
fabric seat: Divina 692 ( purple )
frame: steel C3, Anthraciet Grey
l x w x h: 5450 x 1750 x 750mm.

UNStudio: Ben van Berkel, Caroline Bos with Juergen Heinzel, William de Boer and Machteld Kors, Martijn Prins, Daniela Hake

Advisors
Prooff – Leo Schouten, Tim Orriens, Antoinette Veneman
The SitTable is produced by Arco Contemporary Furniture/ Arco – Jorre van Ast, Roelof Janssen

Ring Fibre Chair by Julien Renault

French designer Julien Renault presented this chair with a circular frame at Interieur 2010 in Kortrijk last week.

Called Ring Fibre Chair, the prototype is moulded from natural fibres and comprises a seat shell suspended from the a ring, supported on four tubular legs.

More about Julien Renault »

The information below is from Renault:

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RING FIBER CHAIR

This prototype is the result of a year of work. The Ring Fiber Chair will be presented for the first time at the design competition of INTERIEUR 2010, Kortrijk.

From an archetype to the ring chair, the first drawings attempt to bond the simplicity of a form and the legibility of elements which usually make up a chair. The principe is basic: a complex seat in natural fiber with a round simple frame and four legs organized around this merge. This construction based in periphery allows the stacking of 5 chairs.

The chair is simple and logical. Her drawing is inspired by low curved wicker chair (for sitting room or garden), known by everyone. It’s an evolution of those classics (mostly anonymous) using new technologies in order to re-invent and perpetuate a typology already seen. The ring fiber chair is reduced by two main parts: a hull in a frame and four legs.

The shape is similar to a fiberglass hull, such as the classic Eames chair. Here fiberglass is replaced by natural fiber (linen, coconut,…) forming by thermoforming or molding. It could be also achieved by injection of recycled plastic. These bio-composite hulls are light and resistant. These new processes are emerging in the automobile industry, the aeronautic industry and in our everyday objects.

Dune by Rainer Mutsch

Vienna Design Week 2010: Austrian designer Rainer Mutsch has created a range of outdoor seating moulded from sheets of fiber cement.

The recyclable composite is more normally used in the construction industry, and is made from natural materials including cellulose fibres.

Called Dune, the seats comprise loops of the material and can be used as individual pieces or a modular system.

Mutsch developed the project with Viennese production company Eternit and presented it at the Verdarium showroom as part of Vienna Design Week earlier this month.

See all our stories about Vienna Design Week »

The information that follows is from Rainer Mutsch:

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DUNE

The background

When I saw the very first Eternit – machine, I was amazed: 20 metres long, more than 100 years old and by now of course upgraded with high-tech computers, the very heart of the machine is still the cast-metal construction built back in 1905. This impressive device survived 2 world wars and is until today producing a material which is sold worldwide.

The history of the material and its technical potential were part of its fascination and at the same time it was a challenge for me to work with a material that it is, due to its roughness and its primary use as building material, not necessarily associated with furniture design in the first place.

But, to quote the Swiss designer Willy Guhl (1915-2004), who designed the Loop-Chair in 1954 “there is no ‚good’ or ‚bad’ material, what makes the difference is its right and adequate use.”

The shape

For me Dune was a very demanding project, because it depended on so many parameters:

ergonomics, durability, capability of mass production, release properties, statics, modularity, and eco friendliness, to mention only a few. Many prototypes and a lot of research were necessary in order to get the maximum stability out of 3d- deformed fiber cement; eventually, the geometry of the chair supports its stability through its controlled expansion and compression of the material.

Dune visualizes the present material-technical maximum parametres of the fibercement material. The result is a highly stable structure with a load-carrying capacity way over the demanded requirement profile for public spaces. With Dune I wanted to tell a story about the materials capabilities, the history of the company and the hand formed production method.

The shape of all 5 Dune elements now allows the user to move freely on the objects and to choose an individual seating position according to his or her individual taste. This flexibility guarantees at the one hand maximum comfort for the individual and on the other hand facilitates communication when the elements are arranged in a group. Since Dune has been designed as highly modular and indefinitely expandable system, it fits all spatial situations.

The possibility of the integration of plants offers an additional possibility to create shadow and to further customize the space. DUNE will be available from spring 2011.

The material

Produced by the company Eternit fiber-cement is a very durable, fully recyclable material consisting of 100% natural materials like cellulose fibers and water.

Fact sheet:
A1 – not flammable
UV – stable (100% solid-colored)
Highly breathable
100% recyclable
100% natural incredients (cellulose fiber and cement)
Green Certificate from the “Institut Bauen und Umwelt” Europe
100% frost-resistant
Highly durable

Each Dune element is 3D-molded out of one whole fiber-cement panel (260 x 110cm), the cut-offs are thereby reduced to a minimum.

Rubber Stool by h220430

Japanese studio h220430 have designed this stool made of recycled rubber.

The stool is made by bending one piece of rubber and bolting the legs to keep them in place.

It can be rolled up and stored when not in use.

Here’s more information from the designers:

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What we aimed for this time is neither functional design nor design for marketing, but design to produce an “opportunity”. We wanted to design not just primary shape of things but secondary communication deriving from the messages in the things. Regarding the rubber, which has widely used for a long time, a research and development of rubber is moving forward with a progress of the material science. Now, the artificial synthetic rubber becomes popular and plays an active part in this field.

On the other hand, a demand of natural rubber keeps expanding since natural rubber is better than synthetic rubber in terms of its physicality and cost. This enlarges a large scale of rubber tree planting, and environmental destruction due to a deforestation become worse mainly in Southeast Asia. Although to use recycled rubber is proposed as one of the approaches to improve this circumstance, this approach is not progressed. We designed a stool made by recycled rubber taking this situation into consideration.

Although a framework of this stool is simple with just bending one piece of rubber plate and holding legs with bolts, a form of this stool is unimaginably elegant and comfortably cushioned with elasticity of rubber. This stool can be stored in a small space by rolling up when it is not in use. We hope that this Rubber Stool is widely used as one of the usage of recycled rubber and it would be a trigger that people realize the circumstance of deforestation for making rubber.

Size: W 320×D 320×H 400

Lost in Sofa by Daisuke Motogi Architecture

Tokyo 2010: Japanese studio Daisuke Motogi Architecture presented this armchair for holding and hiding things at DesignTide Tokyo 2010 earlier this week.

Items can be stored by wedging them into slots between the upholstered cubes that form the seat.

Photographs are by Takahumi Yamada.

Here’s a bit of text from the designer:

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Lost in sofa

Things often get lost under the sofa. It’s ordinary for a coin which slipped out of your pocket, or a never-to-be-found remote to be accidentally found in between/underneath the sofa cushions. Maybe you’ll find a forgotten 10,000yen bill that you once hid there…

Size : W900 D700 H700