Innovations
Det Grønne Møbel, the "Green Furniture" Project
The "Green Furniture Project" is a Danish initiative to design and produce furniture, with a careful choice of materials and techniques. The project is being developed by a cooperative forum where craftsmen, smaller workshop-owners, designers, consumers and researchers gather to share ideas and knowledge, and to establish and test practical ways of mixing good design with sustainable consumption and production patterns.
The organization manages a Danish network of mobile sawmills, that help private citizens as well as smaller forestry-owners to have their trees transformed into useful planks and maybe later into locally produced furniture. Designers and craftsmen have developed a range of furniture-models in contemporary and classic design for "Det Grønne Møbel", so that the organization can help the plank-owners to get high-quality products locally produced from their own trees.
The organization have presented the following essentials, that describes their intention for developing green furniture. Such furniture has to be:
- made of locally, renewable ressources.
- enviromentally friendly manufacture, close to the place of use.
- biodegradable or recycleable without environmental problems.
- easy to maintain and patinate.
- functional and have obvious aesthetic qualities.
- an homage to quality and good craftmanship
- good business for manufacturer and society.
- the potential for becoming a design classic.
- suitable for being a valuable part of the socio-cultural circumstances from cradle to grave.
- and as a very radical approach, the furniture has to consist of at least 80% of local renewable resources.
At the project start, designers and craftsmen worked together to come up with new designs using the above criteria. In this way, the designers were introduced to a broad variety of processes, old and new, that were not only environmentally friendly but also gave additional values and interest to the furniture, such as woodcarving, intarsia, (wooden inlays), upholstery made from seaweed collected at the nearby coastline, ecologically grown flax as well as newly developed natural based paints and stains. Many of these old processes and methods proofs have intrinsic sustainability and are in danger of being lost or forgotten, unless they are used, revised and updated. At the same time, the craftsmen were introduced to new materials and techniques, that have an environmentally sound potential, such as non-artificial surface treatments, new "cold-bending" techniques etc.
The Antiques of the Future
Much green furniture-experiments appear as piles of branches or recycled cardboard, furniture that might be good for display in a window but not for decades of use.
The "Det Grønne Møbel" collection consists of modern furniture, that can be repaired and maintained, and becomes more and more beautiful as the years go by. When the day comes, when the furniture is no longer functional, it can be disposed of in the garden with clean conscience, being either biodegradable or recycleable in some way. Every piece of furniture has been analysed, so that it is possible to document, what it is made from and how much energy have been consumed for the manufacturing.
Government funded development.
The project has largely been financed by Danish government funds, having been used as a demonstration project to illustrate a new overall view of and solution to environmental problems. The project has been running since 1994, supported by the Danish Ministy of Culture and Ministry of Enviroment and Energy, to much critical and media acclaim.
The project has gained a broad public interest, combining environmental and cultural dimensions by supporting smaller enterprises and workshops, and also involves public participation through festivals like "elm-days". Elm-days were held in the bigger Danish cities, where several thousand people experienced the wonderful transformation of trees killed by the dutch-elm-disease into planks under festive conditions.
The Green Furniture Project can be contacted at
dgm@vip.cybercity.dk
or at
+45 22 17 55 98
Danish website: www.dgm.dk
LANDSFORENINGEN DET GRØNNE MØBEL
JYLLANDS ALLÉ 34
DK 8000 AARHUS C
