Strip Shelf by Popular Architecture
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 07.17.06
The first time we saw Casey Mack's Strip Shelving, we liked it a lot. Then we learned the design had a TreeHugger angle, made with 75% sawdust, which made us like it even more. Then we read this quote by Metropolis: "The design world often seems split between two camps: the plastics-obsessed futurists and the earnest greens. Casey Mack bridges the wood-plastic gap." So it seems that Mack, proprietor of Popular Architecture, devoted to evolving urban building with a new focus on maximizing overlaps between pop culture, open systems, and sustainability, combines the best of many worlds: smart design, green materials and functional shelving. Strip, whose patent pending design is in advanced development, is currently being discussed with sales and marketing companies to get the shelves on the shelf. Free prototype samples (prototype pictured above) and more information are available for interested retailers and end users through info(at)populararchitecture(dot)com. ::Strip Shelving and ::Popular Architecture
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So they are using a wood/plastic composite material? That doesn't seem very sustainable to me. 75% sawdust in a plastic composite material means that 75% of this product, a product which eventually goes into a landfill, will be lost from the bio materials stream forever. This is like making poly-blend shirts, it creates a material that is neither a bio nutrient or a technical nutrient.
Hi Michael,
I appreciate your bringing up MBDC's bio and technical nutrient thinking. Thankfully Strip's made using a thermoplastic, letting the manufacturer regularly recycle waste composite back into new extrusions. The main issue here is the problem of the "dumb" landfill, which doesn't care what kind of nutrient anything is.
isn't the plastic contaminated then with the old sawdust? whose fibers would get smaller and weaken the material with each consecutive recycling? or is the sawdust simply 'filler' with no structural advantage?
i don't mean to doubt, but sawdust makes a superb compost material... unless it's bound up in thermoplastic resins.