Design trend upcycling: From waste wood to furniture

Lidewij Edelkoort presents the highlights of the largest furniture fair in North America in ZOW Trend Report New York

[Bad Salzuflen, 18 August 2014] Acting as ZOW trend scout, the world famous trend expert, Lidewij Edelkoort, visited the International Contemporary Furni-ture Fair (ICFF) in New York. In her trend_report on the American fair she filters out the developments set to influence the furniture market in the coming seasons. The event demonstrated how creative designers are when it comes to the recycling of waste products, such as wooden pallets. The fair also showed the prevalence of materials like marble or glass. The trend material glass benefits from its multifaceted possibilities for application and is currently gaining in importance due to the imitations of diverse crystals and gemstones.

The New York fair demonstrated that glass is making a come-back in interior design, particularly on tabletops or in the form of tiles. In their use of this material, designers make a point of imitating the appearance of minerals such as sapphires, rubies, emeralds, amethysts and agates. Shattered glass is a recurring motif which is kept stable by means of diverse innovative techniques. "Glass is currently being re-invented as a precious material on account of the attractiveness of crystal and gemstones", explains Lidewij Edelkoort.

Wall design in luxurious faux marble
As it was, mineral materials played a central role in the fair, comments the Dutch expert: The presence of marble at this year's ICFF was overwhelming, both as an authentic natural element and imitated in the form of ceramics or synthetic materials." Individuality is also finding its way into wallpaper design: In the area of interior design, for instance, trompe- l’œil wallpapers with marbled patterns offer an affordable possibility of creating a natural appearance in a wide room. "
"Most of the marble motifs are designed with large veins. When used on a wall or on the surface of an object, they create the luxurious impression of having been produced from a single piece of stone," remarks Lidewij Edelkoort.

A further trend in the design of walls and surfaces concerns "image printing". This involves photographs being taken of materials including bricks, roofing tiles or wood, which are subsequently used as a motif on items such as fabric wallpaper or large murals. Since the patterns of these "printed images" are not simply repeated as they would otherwise be using conventional printing techniques, customers are thus offered individual design solutions.

Upcycling: Innovation meets sustainability
The recycling of materials such as wood and metal has already been the norm in industry for a long time. Over the past few years, the furniture sector has also been attaching great importance to sourcing sustainable materials. Manufacturers are increasingly making use of recycled materials in furniture production, which are then upcycled. The ICFF illustrated the degree of innovation achieved by designers in their taking up on the idea of conserving resources. Visitors were shown, for example, how sustainable interior fittings can be designed with wooden pallets - from pieces of furniture to home accessories through to flooring. An additional form of applied recycling is the increased use of liquid wood in furniture design: This blend of organic materials, which was originally a waste product from the production of paper, is being used by more and more designers as an environ-mentally-friendly substitute for plastics.

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This release was published on openPR.