High Five: 5 furniture designs made with unusual materials
Wood or plastic are simply too boring for some furniture designers; they prefer to experiment with alternative materials instead.
Chairs made of wire
These aren't sketches, but rather actual pieces of furniture. The Czech furniture designer Jan Plechac takes some of the world's most iconic designs — such as Josef Hoffmann's Kubus Armchair (in the middle), Gerrit Rietveld's Red Blue Chair (second left) or the Walnut Chair by Eames (right) — and reduces them to contours, which he then reproduces with wire.
Lampshades made of seaweed
The raw material of these lamps is not only renewable, but also freely available in coastal regions all over the world. The Danish designer Jonas Edvard harvests fucus seaweed from Copenhagen's coastline and processes it into a robust material through a sophisticated process. He then builds lampshades or even chairs with it.
Designer pieces made of yarn
No screws or nails are used to hold the pieces of these chairs together; they are simply wrapped in colorful yarn. Swedish designer Anton Alvarez uses leftover pieces of wood and wraps them with hundreds of meters of polyester yarn, creating interesting patterns full of color.
Furniture made with car bodies
The car is the "Germans' favorite child," the saying goes. To a point that some people might not want to be separated from their car at night... German furniture designer Martin Schlund makes their dreams come true and turns vintage cars into personalized pieces of furniture. Along with beds, his creations include desks, sofas and armchairs.
Home-grown chairs
Carpentry without tools: All you need for these chairs is a garden and a lot of patience. British designer Gavin Munro grows his pieces into their shape using wire and plastic racks, guiding his flexible willow plants to grow in a particular direction, as seen behind him on the picture above. Three years later, the chairs can be "harvested."