At the Thailand International Furniture Fair 2012 Yothaka, a furniture manufacturer from Thailand introduced his collection for this year. Range of craft techniques and materials available locally like opium poppy, yan lipao and hyacinth are used to create the furniture maintaining the relevance of culture to their designs. For producing their signature chairs pineapple paper is being used.
Hyacinth, a tropical water weed and can be easily found in lakes and rivers of Southeast Asia. It grows real fast and has been a problem for the Thai Government. Therefore, in order to solve the problem by removing it from waters and also provide an incentive to the villagers an income generating environment friendly sustainable material was developed from the weed. Since it can be found in large quantity a method to integrate the plant fibers into furniture was found by Yothaka. Another material is yan lipao that is only found in Southern Thailand forests and is turned into structural form by weaving through traditional techniques of basketry.
It has been thousands of years since paper is being used for different purposes but fiber made out of pineapples has been developed by Thailand, which is used by the company for making bench and stools seating in different colors. Opium poppy, which is cultivated as a livelihood by Lisu, an ethnic hill tribe group of eastern Tibet can be turned into rope and cloth is harnessed by Yothaka for producing their chairs.
Apart from the natural fibers, since 2005 company has also been working with PE plastic. A polyurethane polyethylene compound was used to make one of their recyclable collections but was weaved just the same like natural rattan line.
Via:Designboom
