Palmwood Goes Architectural
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 11.19.07
We mentioned Pacific Green’s Palmwood furniture ages ago. Originally conceived by an Australian designer, the lounges, chairs and beds are still available, such as table/vanity shown on the left. But we recently noted that, like the Durapalm that Lloyd updated you on last month, Palmwood has also entered the architectural realm.
They suggest their material sourced from former copra coconut plantations, from Fiji, we suspect, makes for a very stalwart exotic rainforest timber substitute. Said to have a hardness equivalent to Ebony and Jarrah hardwoods they note that its strength is derived from the ingrained silica, and that it is free of knots. It is described as being waterproof and needing no chemical coatings. Though elsewhere they mention their own impregnation treatment, which makes it “impervious to white ants and other wood-boring insects”, without detailing how this is achieved.
On offer, architecturally, are structural framework timbers of up to three metres (~10 ft) length that are, in their words, “gunbarrel-straight.” Plus they can do cladding and lining, flooring and decking as well as screens. Elements of which are used on the house in London seen top right. ::Pacific Green International
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The last thing we need are more ways to use palm products.
The growth of palm for commercial uses is one of the worst environmental travesties of recent decades and products that use palm products are just increasing the profitability of this extremely damaging trend.
I work for Pacific Green. Allow me to counter the comment above.
There are certainly environmentally destructive farming practices in the OIL PALM industry. Pacific Green only uses senile (80+ years old) coconut palm stems. These are unproductive and unwanted, planted mainly by German planters in our part of the Pacific at the beginning of the 20th century.
What is so wrong with using felled palms productively? At least we're putting an otherwise wasted product to good use.