If the indispensability of the sustainable approach in design is now taken for granted, the crucial importance of a coherent design thought in reducing the environmental impact of products deserves more attention. In this regard, in fact, John Thackara, one of the most influential journalists and design theorists, is keen to reiterate that 80% of the environmental footprint exerted by material assets is determined at the design stage. In addition to meeting the needs of consumers, the so-called “good project”, in fact, should aim both at optimizing the production process and at facilitating the transport system. Everything, therefore, could be attributable to the triad: recycling, flexibility and compactness. However, there is another component that contributes to the sustainable efficiency of a product: stackability. Because the way objects are used, stored and transported also matters. That’s why we dedicate this article to stackable furniture: 5 products for Christmas will guide us here to discover all the advantages.
What is meant by stackable furniture and what have been the evolutions?
To tell the truth, any furnishing accessory can now be made stackable if, in fact, its volumes are such as to be able to be superimposed without effort and wear. It goes without saying that the first advantage to which these are associated is the reduction of the occupied space once stored. But although in our eyes they are only practical, light and functional, stackable furniture is one of the main solutions through which to counter the repercussions of Fast-Design.
Thinking about it, however, the stackability of domestic consumer goods was not really born to meet environmental needs. Suffice it to say, in fact, that the first stackable furniture appeared on the market thanks to the experiments that the most far-sighted architects of the 1950s began to conduct by handling plastic. But as we have already discussed here, it is not plastic that is to blame. After a decade, that of the postwar period, spent trying to give warmth to American homes with natural materials and colors that took inspiration from the earth, in fact, a new generation of European designers decided to reverse the trend. Fluid shapes, bright colors, plastic and stackability were therefore the new keywords of the project.
To date, however, given the criticality of the climatic condition and the schizophrenia of consumption, stackability can no longer be conceived as a question of style. Reducing the clutter in logistics, developing efficient molds and surrounding ourselves with intelligently conceived objects becomes an imperative that, as conscious consumers, we should not shy away from. So let’s make some examples of products to refer to before putting the umpteenth new furniture in the living room in the cart.
The Vela chair by Magis
Vela is the name of the first stackable magnesium chair made by Magis based on a design by architects Gilli Kuchik and Ran Amitai. With production in Israel and assembly in Italy, Vela was one of the main novelties of the 2019 Show, the last fair in which most companies, while enjoying an expanding market, were stranded by a not exactly responsible overproduction. Yet Magis, which is a company in which experimentation and innovation in an ecological key have never been lacking, has decided to invest, even before the awakening of consciousness to which the pandemic has contributed, in the use of a material that is not really “Well seen” in trendy design to create a classic stackable chair.
Abundant in nature, light, robust, ecological, stable and resistant to corrosion, magnesium is mostly used in the automotive sector. However in furniture, it has always been relegated to the second row but, in reality, it could represent a new frontier. There are, in fact, undoubted advantages over, for example, aluminum, also in terms of sustainability. In addition to lightness, magnesium requires a process that offers less energy consumption thanks to its lower melting point and shorter molding cycle. The magnesium is then extracted from the water. This avoids excavations and the consequent desertification. But not only. The extraction of magnesium does not involve any dispersion of CO2 in the air and, when it returns to dissolve in sea water, it oxygenates the marine flora and fauna.
It is therefore evident that the combination of an ecological material, a design that aims both at the enhancement of the same as at the streamlining of the volumes, together with some more effort to be able to place the products on each other, results in an excellent product that It will hopefully help educate consumers to buy a cheaper but better quality chair.
The Tip Ton chair by Vitra
Vitra, one of the main companies that for some time has placed sustainability at the center of the project, has, in 2020, given new life to the Tip Ton chair designed by Edward Barber & Jay Osgerny 9 years earlier, encouraging its ecological imprinting given by its stackability with materials polymeric. The Research and Development center of the Swiss company, in fact, has been involved for some time in the design of new materials to be integrated into existing projects.
The Tip Ton Re chair is thus born from the recovery of reusable materials that are collected in Germany with the Yellow Sack program. After being separated from the metals, the plastic is effectively crushed, cleaned and transformed into a reusable granulate. Therefore, by enhancing domestic waste, Tip Ton Re becomes a perfect seat for offices, schools and home offices. In addition to straightening the pelvis and the spine with a slight rocking, it is stackable and completely recyclable at the end of its life cycle, thus revealing itself in its most natural form.
The B9 coffee table collection by Marcel Breuer for Thonet
The stackable furniture, however, are not only those that we buy in multiples equal to themselves, so as to store them in the cellar to take them back in proportion to that of the guests. Even in view of the greater malleability required by new domestic habits, in fact, those flexible supplies that contract and expand according to use should be re-evaluated. This implies an interpenetration of the volumes that exploits the principle of stackability while not overlapping, in fact, the parts.
This is the case of a collection that is not exactly first-hair. It is, in fact, the set of B9 coffee tables conceived by the master of the Bauhaus, Marcel Breuer, in 1925. Convinced that the furniture should conform to the type of material used, Breuer wanted to experiment with the use of tubular steel to make furniture of support available in four sizes. These were initially used only in the canteen of the Bauhaus building, and then entered the catalog Thonet on 1930/31. Today they are sold both as single items and as a set. But their strength lies precisely in the harmony with which they extract and withdraw into each other.
Vogue coffee table by Lafuma Mobilier
Famous for having satisfied the needs of the European middle class of the late 1950s, designing itinerant furniture of such dimensions as to fit in the trunk of the Renault Dauphine, Lafuma Mobilier is a French company that has come a long way in the sector of small foldable Pop-Up furniture with “tapered” closing system. And, by continuing to play with steel and fabric, it still satisfies its share of the market.
One of the latest gems is, not surprisingly, the Vogue coffee table. A small triangular things rest that can be used both indoors and outdoors. Its strengths? Surely the sturdiness conferred by the tube structure and the lacquered steel floor. Resistance to sunlight and adaptability of use. But, as confirmed on the site itself, the main quality is stackability, which, making it usable also as a stool, facilitates its storage.
The PS 2002 watering can / vase from IKEA
And finally, how not to mention the annaffiatoio-vaso di Ikea? Yes, just what we put in the cart just before check-out. Or that we give to the glam aunt at the last moment. Here, as always, the Swedish company manages to combine decoration, functionality and ecology of the product while being the emblem of what, at the beginning of the article, we condemned as Fast-Design. It can be used both as a vase and as a watering can, this product lends itself well to building colored piles which, making a corner of the terrace pop, actually facilitate shipping, stocking and storage.
As demonstrated, therefore, investing in stackable furniture is good and feasible, for all budgets!
