Sustainable Furniture Design
Sustainable Furniture Design
Halle Building
Cleveland, OH
July 12 – 16, 2010
Exhibiting in downtown Cleveland this week is sustainable furniture designed by students in The Cleveland Institute of Art’s Department of Industrial Design. This exhibition is part of the first-ever Cleveland Furniture and Millwork Fair (July 14 and 15) that will feature Northeast Ohio’s finest furniture makers and millwork companies alongside Cleveland’s world-class design community.
In the 1950s Cleveland was a city with over 900,000 residents, but is now home to fewer than 500,000 people. The loss of population and the recent upsurge in home foreclosures have resulted in many abandoned buildings that have become health and safety hazards, taxing local resources. Because of the lack of demand for these buildings and the resulting liability, the City of Cleveland has begun to demolish them.
Local organizations such as Growth Ring Enterprises have taken steps to deconstruct—rather than demolish—these buildings, while companies like A Piece of Cleveland (APOC) design and manufacture furniture from the deconstruction material. The concept is to divert useful landfill-bound material, treat it as a valuable resource, and use it to create new up-cycled products.
As part of its strategy of embracing green design, the Industrial Design program at The Cleveland Institute of Art has partnered with APOC on a project to develop furniture for CIA’s new campus using reclaimed material. The project is intended to meet a local need with locally designed and manufactured products made from local raw materials.
The eight-week project started with research focused on understanding the needs of users of four areas: integrated technology classrooms, student workspaces in the Integrated Media Environment, faculty and staff offices, and public/community spaces. Next, students developed concepts for each of the four areas, choosing one concept to refine into their final design. The final phase was construction of working prototypes made from reclaimed material.
In addition to the pieces developed in partnership with APOC, this exhibition includes student designs that push the boundaries of sensory experience and explore the rich possibilities of flat-pack designs.
This exhibit will be on display from Monday, July 12 to Friday, July 16 in the Halle building at 1228 Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland. Public viewing hours are during the Cleveland Furniture and Millwork Fair (July 14 and 15) from 3 to 7pm both Wednesday and Thursday. If you’d like to arrange another time to view the work, please contact Dan Cuffaro at dcuffaro@cia.edu. For more information go to http://www.cia.edu/blog/?p=3650