You can do a lot with few materials. Students from the German Angewandte Kunst Schneeberg academy prove as much with the series of furniture they created, made only from wooden frameworks and a felt composite called Lanisor, which you can find in our database here.
Lanisor is a lightweight, flexible, felt-like material, with great acoustic properties. It is made from PET fibres. It combines the softness of felt with the sturdiness of sheet material, as you can fold and bend it like paper, but it remains stiff.
The material is very sturdy, as the bench, consisting of zigzagged Lanisor and two wooden rods, proves. The students also created a slanted bookshelf that has shelves made from wooden panels slicing through the felt. They used Lanisor’s flexibility, bending it around simple wooden frameworks to form shelving with a curved structure.
The goal of the project was to make a 3D shape out of flat material just by cutting, folding and sticking parts together. To shape the material, the students used traditional woodworking tools and machines.
Some of the furniture is customisable. The cradle, with a removable felt bed, can be changed into a swing when the child has outgrown the bed.
According to Dezeen, the furniture is designed to explore the felt’s potential, and contrast its “haptically appealing” surface with wood’s solidity.
You can see the furniture for yourself during the exhibition “Touch” at the Galerie Angewandte Kunst in Schneeberg (DE), from 23 March to 18 June 2017. The furniture was also on display during IMM Cologne (16-22 January 2017).
Photos via Dezeen