Fabulous design. Cutting edge looks. Interesting twists in color, fabric, and texture. These are all elements inherent in design that's ecologically sound. Yes, your creativity can have free reign even as you make choices that help protect the planet. Increasingly, manufacturers are creating products that have minimal impact on the environment, whether because they're made from organically-grown cotton or because they're made with renewable resources. We think environmentally friendly design is so important that we recently added a Green Design lesson to the NYIAD Complete Course in Interior Design.
In our "Decorating Green" column we'll look at a sustainable, low-impact element of design in each issue of "Designer Monthly." We hope these articles will help us all help the planet and the many creatures that share it with us.
What do you do if you’re short on space, long on friends, crazy about innovative design and dedicated to decorating your home with products that don’t harm the enviroment?
If you had a huge pad, you could buy any number of “green” sofas or chairs (some of which we’ve mentioned in past columns here on Deisgner Monthly) If you didn’t have all those friends to entertain, you wouldn’t have a problem; you could just have one adorable chair and one adorable lamp.
And if you weren’t crazy about innovative design and didn’t care about buying earth-friendly products, you wouldn’t be reading this article —plus, you could just buy some folding chairs down at Lotsa Seats and make your friends feel like they’re at a church supper when they come over. (Well, that would solve the problem of having so many friends.)
But most of us could use a little extra seating, and what we’ve found from Flexible Love is so terrific that you’ll want it even if you’re friendless and living in a mansion.
Flexible Love brings a new definition to the term “folding chair.” The furniture uses a unique, accordion-like honeycomb structure, and is made of recycled material, such as recycled paper and wood produced. The designers also say the furniture is produced “using pre-existing manufacturing processes in order to reduce their overall impact on the environment.”
The furniture is designed so that when folded up, it takes up little room and can seat fewer people. But when it’s expanded, it provides seating for more, and also becomes a design statement.
The furniture is designed by a Taiwanese designer, Chishen Chiu. We love his innovation and courage in taking a risk in developing such a creative design.
The Flexible Love sofas come in three sizes, for seating eight, twelve, or sixteen people when expanded. Oh, and one more size, in case your apartment is really as tiny as you say it is —and in case you have teeny tiny friends.
The only question you may have left is why this product is called “Flexible Love.” That’s because it’s a “flexible love seat” —but we like to think, in the spirit of St. Valentine’s Day, that it’s a seat that allows you to be flexible in how many friends you can love. Especially if you show that love by not making them seat on hard folding chairs like at a church supper.
