Cardboard furniture
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Cardboard furniture is classified as furniture designed and made from corrugated fibreboard (including inverted corrugated boards), heavy paperboard, honeycomb board, fibre tubes or a combination of these materials. Cardboard furniture is misleading, since "cardboard" is a depreciated term, sometimes describing corrugated cardboard, but sometimes to any heavy paper. but not being sufficiently specific to describe the various forms of paper-based boards used today in order to make furniture. Generally cardboard furniture is lightweight and easy to assemble, without using screws or glue.


History and development

First usage of cardboard as a material for engineered lightweight structures occurred at the 1954
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with
Richard Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American people, American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, ...
displaying a
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made of cardboard. In 1968, German designer Peter Raacke demonstrated the possibilities of creating a cardboard chair within five minutes live on
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, calling it the "first really modern piece of furniture". In 1972, Canadian-born architect Frank Gehry (b. 1929) introduced the first publicly well-received cardboard furniture series ("Easy Edges"), including the iconic Wiggle Chair. Being confronted with some resistance at the time - i.g.
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calling it "paper furniture for penny pinchers" - and simultaneously worrying the furniture's popularity would be paramount to his work as an
architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
, Gehry stopped production in 1973 and quit cardboard furniture altogether by 1982, eventually giving the rights to Vitra, where the Wiggle Chair still is manufactured to this day. In the 1990s, Japanese architect
Shigeru Ban Biography
, The Hyatt Foundation, retrieved 26 March 2014
is a Japanese architect, known for his i ...
, recognized for his architecture using paper tubes, created furniture pieces which later resulted in his "Carta Collection" in 2016. Between 2001 and 2002, IKEA started to replace the core of selected designs with cardboard in order to reduce costs for the consumer and contribute to sustainability. In 2010, British designer Giles Miller created a
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, using cardboard furniture. For the
2020 Tokyo Olympics The , officially the and also known as , was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July. Tokyo was selected as the List of Olympic Games h ...
cardboard beds were used in the athlete's accommodations, creating a media discussion whether or not these beds were made to prevent the athletes from having sexual intercourse. File:Papphocker Hans-Peter Stange, Berlin 1979.jpg, ''Falthocker'' cardboard stool, by Hans-Peter Stange, Berlin 1979 File:Pappbett Hans-Peter Stange 1989.jpg, ''Pappbett'' cardboard bed, by Hans-Peter Stange, Berlin 1989 File:Manfred kielnhofer contemporary art design paper tube chair.jpg, Paper tube chair by
Manfred Kielnhofer Manfred "KILI" Kielnhofer (born 28 January 1967 in Haslach an der Mühl) is an Austrian painter, sculptor, designer and photographer. Due to his antisemitic statements in connection with the planned vaccination to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, nu ...
, 2002Interlux Chair by Manfred Kielnhofer
using paper tubes
File:SB2006 CBOARD.JPG, Modular cardboard furniture by Mark Wee, Robin Wau & Jonathan Choe File:Nordwerk Design MC 205 Cardboard Chair, Maximilian Hansen.jpg, Cardboard Orthogrid Chair MC 205 by Nordwerk Design, 2013


Consumer market

Cardboard furniture mainly is classified as
ready-to-assemble furniture Ready-to-assemble furniture (RTA), also known as knock-down furniture (KD), flat pack furniture, or kit furniture, is a form of furniture that requires customer assembly. The separate components are packed for sale in cartons which also contain ...
(RTA), taking advantage of the low weight of cardboard and the ability to flatpack easily. As of 2020, the RTA consumer market in the
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alone was estimated to be worth 13.8 billion dollars with large companies being less dominant than widely expected, but facing competition from regional chains, making
drop shipping Drop shipping is a form of retail business where the seller accepts customer orders without keeping stock on hand. Instead, in a form of supply chain management, the seller transfers the orders and their shipment details either to the manufactur ...
economically interesting for smaller companies. The 2021 European Union market is estimated to be worth over 15 billion Euro. Furthermore, cardboard furniture generally appeals to a younger demographic, such as Millennials or Gen-Z, leaving potential for growth. At this point, none of the major furniture producers has entered the cardboard furniture market. However, whether cardboard furniture only remains a trend or not is still debated.


Products and material

The market offers various cardboard furniture designs, such as beds, benches, chairs, shelves, stools, tables, and many more. Not all types of cardboard can be used for every type of furniture. Generally, to make cardboard furniture, heavy paperboard, corrugated fibreboard (including inverted corrugated board), honeycomb cardboard and core material without a liner are all being used. Also, the liner can alternate between Test- and Kraftliner, depending on the design.


Perception of cardboard furniture

Cardboard as a material generally is viewed negatively when used as a primary material for furniture or as a building material in general. Several studies and research programs have been conducted, entering not only into structural questions, but also questions of acceptance. Examples are programs such as BAMP at the University of Darmstadt, the CATSE program at
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, Cardboard Technical Research and Developments at
TU Delft Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...
and others. One potential reason is the widely fragmented cardboard industry with thin corrugated cardboard used for packaging as the primary material for potential consumers to mainly get in contact with, depreciating the material in consumers perception in general without differentiating between cheap packaging material and high-performance paper-boards. On the design side, a 2018 study at
GuangDong University of Technology Guangdong University of Technology (abbreviated as GDUT) is a provincial university in Guangdong, China. The university offers a range of courses in engineering, science, technology, management, liberal arts and law, with major emphasis on the st ...
researched consumer perception of cardboard furniture depending on the design using eye tracking technology. The researchers found that simpler, more familiar shapes are more likely to lead to a positive purchasing decisions, with recognition of familiar shapes as a driving factor. However, this study has been conducted in China. Therefore the cultural background in comparison to western consumption behaviour must be taken into consideration. In order to elevate the perception of cardboard furniture, German-Canadian design studio Nordwerk Design published construction plans for cardboard furniture for free in 2020, arguing that it requires a critical mass of consumers to lead to a shift in the general perception and that this only can be achieved by getting as much quality design out as possible.


See also

*
Cardboard Cardboard is a generic term for heavy paper-based products. The construction can range from a thick paper known as paperboard to corrugated fiberboard which is made of multiple plies of material. Natural cardboards can range from grey to light ...
* Cardboard modelling * Corrugated box design *
Furniture design Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Fu ...
* Paperboard


Literature

* Dry, Graham. "Hans Günther Reinstein und seine Möbel aus Pappe". In: Kunst in Hessen und am Mittelrhein (1982) 22, pp. 131 ff. * Martens, Bob. "Das Kartonmöbel". Wien: Technische Universität Wien, 1995, * Minke, Gemot. "Bauen mit Pappe". In: DBZ (1977) 11, pp. 1497–1500. * Schreibmayer, Peter. "Cardboards. Bauen mit Pappe." In: Architektur Aktuell (1991) 146, pp. 20–21. * Digel, Marion. "Papermade. Wohnen mit Objekten aus Papier und Karton", München 2002, * Leblois, Olivier. "Carton. Mobilier/Éco-Design/Architecture", Marseille 2008, * Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung "Einrichten – Leben in Karton", Städtische Galerie Villa Zanders, Bergisch-Gladbach 2008 * Cardboardbook (Ginko Press 2010), * Soroka, Walter. "Illustrated Glossary of Packaging Terminology", 2008, ISBN 978-1-930268-27-2


References

{{commons category Furniture