How do you make children’s furniture eco-friendly? In the case of HECMEC’s folding chairs and tables, it’s more than just using recyclable materials for construction – they make themselves more difficult to outgrow in function. Yes, they’ll remain useful even as your kids grow taller.
Endowed with a modular design, the furniture can quickly be reconfigured for different heights by simply swapping out the tubes that make up the frame. For the chairs, you simply replace an outgrown tube with a longer one, all while using the same backrest, seat and bottom, to come up with a taller seating height. Same goes for the tables, whose top and bottoms can take varying lengths of the modular connectors.
The furniture items use plant resin for the main parts of each piece, providing hardy make while remaining 100% recyclable. Since they’ll likely be thrown out much faster than the other components, the swappable connectors were spared from the more expensive resin material. Instead, it uses brown paper rolled into tubes via a fabrication process that produces lower carbon emissions, compared to other alternatives, such as plastic and steel.
We’re not sure how sturdy a paper tube can be, but we’re assuming they’ve done enough research and testing to make sure it holds up to heavy use. The pieces were reportedly shown off at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair last week and they were propping people up competently, so it should be good. Hopefully, they’ve laid on a waterproof finish too – I remember spilling countless glasses of drinks when I was kid.
No word on pricing or release, but it looks like the perfect long-term furniture investment for your children’s play and study areas.
[Hecmec via Inhabitots]