laminated and carved cardboar chair
photo: monocomplex design studio

We love this chair by monocomplex design studio because it illustrates an essential lesson about cardboard: when sheets of it are glued together they become an incredibly strong material, a homemade laminate that can be used like wood. Here, the designer glued together 127 pieces of cardboard (recycled boxes, not pristine sheets) until he had a big roughly-arm-chair-size block. Then he sculpted it with a grinder and saw, gradually tailoring a chair to fit his body.

You can watch the process here, a 1.5 minute revelation. (Video link here.)

We have a friend whose long been making cardboard laminate to devise ingenious solutions that would normally be made out of wood. A former stage set builder and designer, he answered the question we’ve asked in a post about Andre Zittel’s cool cardboard bookshelves: Can you paint cardboard? Yes indeed. Set painters do it all the time, with latex or oil. Yaye!!!

We’re viewing our pile of yet-to-be-unpacked book boxes in a new light.

via Design Boom

Related posts: caine’s arcade: a miracle of cardboard, tape, imagination
clipped-together shelving pt. 2: cardboard boxes
cool clamped-together shelving + a noguchi-esque clamp
couturier de cardboard: matthew sporzynski
d-i-y folding screen (thinking out loud in cardboard)
cardboard, crates + chairs as building materials
cardboard office + furniture (+ where to buy cardboard)

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One thought on “carved cardboard chair + the secret power of cardboard

  1. I book marked this a long time ago and finally got around to viewing it. It’s a wonderful site with so many great ideas with works of such creative people. It has really spurred my latent creatively thinking processes. Thank you so much all of you, you are a great inspiration to me and many others I’m sure.

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