At the High Point Market, BiOH® is sponsoring ProjectUDesign, an opportunity for students of the SavannahCollegeofArtandDesign (SCAD) to create an eco-friendly and stylish upholstered wing chair and have a chance for their chair to be added to the CenturyFurniture line, made with BiOH® polyols and Toray‘sUltrasuedeInteriors. These three companies are working together for the good of one, which is to start moving towards a greener approach for manufacturing in America.
What an amazing opportunity for these students at SCAD. It is so thrilling for me as a decorator to see manufacturers taking on more of a role in integrating eco-friendly with functional, comfortable, beautiful and profitable. All of these are important elements and are not mutually exclusive.
As a proponent of the Slow Home Movement this excites me even more.
At GBC Style, the The Slow Home Movement means that I, as a decorator, have a responsibility to educate consumers to become more conscious in their home furnishing purchases – the items chosen to decorate our homes should be considered as treasures. We ought to seek out these treasures with the mind to buy the very best we can afford, preferably made by a crafts persons attempting to make a living from their hands, or from an American company trying to stay afloat in a global economy. Those being created by CenturyFurniture are a great example. I applaud companies that are slowly making a switch towards a greener approach of doing business.
For my fellow designers, this is a great lesson for us. We ought to be considering not just the amazing new products created by those like CenturyFurniture, but also how we can re-purpose the pieces that a client already has. Perhaps re-upholstering with a beautiful fabric like those offered by Toray’sand even better, replacing the foam with that from BiOH®polyols. Not only will the client have a new and fabulous piece, but they will have also kept a piece of furniture out of the landfills and done so with a green focus.
So whether you are a consumer or a designer, we should all applaud the work that these folks are doing and consider it a challenge to ourselves to think outside the box. How can we re-purpose something in our home to make it better?
I can’t wait to see which of these three students wins the final ProjectUDesign contest. Regardless, they are all winners as are we, for they have brought us not just new designs, but a re-energized way of seeing furniture.