Flatpack Table from Planko Designs
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05.19.08
We do love our flatpack furniture; cutting it out of plywood with a CNC machine and sliding it under a door reduces the amount of material used, the packaging, the shipping, everything is just more efficient. It can be fun too, as Dan Planko demonstrates with his new end table, which mixes traditional design elements with the latest manufacturing technologies, and even comes in its own canvas bag.
Daniel Planko is an artist, designer and maker whose works covers a wide range of media, scale and application. From his site:
"Planko’s work is characterized – if it can be characterized – as a marriage of the handmade and the industrially-produced, the serious and the whimsical, the familiar and the unexpected.
In seeking to have people see the world in different ways – to reinvent the everyday – his work operates in the realm of ideas, the power of community, the transformative powers of art and objects and rewards of seeing and being in the world. "
Well said. The table is not on his site yet, but watch for it at ::Plankodesign
This is only my second visit to treehugger. But I am impressed. That said, I have been in the furniture industry for some years and must say that the functionality of the featured table is very common and is not what I would exactly call design forward or even visually attractive for that matter. Sorry.
No mention of whether the plywood used in construction is FSC certified? This is TreeHugger after all... I would think that most people might find that info more than a little relevant.
LA: You are correct, it should have been in there. It is FSC plywood.