Environmental design for furniture

Work Package Objectives:

• Identify the factors which contribute to good / bad furniture design from an environmental perspective.

• Evaluate the current design of a range of key products and optimise this design

Work Package Leader:

Richard Morris, University of Brighton

Task 2.1 – Identification of 10 key products representing significant sales volumes within the Office and Contract sectors of the market 

Task 2.2 – Characterisation of products in terms of material content and construction techniques. Identification of existing barriers to effective reworking and conduct of an environmental evaluation of each product  (report forms part of task 2.6)

Task 2.3 – Identification of current good practice in furniture design – using case studies of exemplar designers 

Task 2.4 – Re-design of products to reduce their environmental burden using existing knowledge coupled with input from suppliers, furniture designers, manufacturers and purchasers through practical workshops (report forms part of task 2.6)

Task 2.5 – Prototyping:  The best 5 products in terms of environmental improvements to their life cycle (materials content, resource efficiency etc) will be selected and manufactured at the prototype scale (report forms part of task 2.6)

Task 2.6 – Best practice document providing details of original products, revised products and the impact of changes on environmental impact