More Creative Furniture for Cramped Urban Living: 20 Pieces of Ingenious ‘Flat Pack’ Furniture

Creative Flat Pack Fold Old Table
[Above: flat pack book case design by Jeremy Grove]

Flat pack furniture is exactly what it sounds like: furniture that starts out entirely as sheets of wood, metal or even cardboard. In addition to being clever and simply aesthetically awesome, flat pack furniture is also eco-friendly and highly creative. Without further ado, here are 20 more examples of incredibly compact and transforming furniture for cramped urban living.

Creative Metal Urban Furniture Chair Design

Designer Keiji Ashizawa has applied flat-pack design principles in developing his sleek set of furniture objects including the above chairs and stools. Like giant versions of 3D toy puzzles or model cars, there is a playful aspect to these powerful industrial-produced sturdy-yet-elegant metal designs.

Clever Plywood Chair Bench Furniture

RawStudio is the brainchild of Nick Rawcliffe, a talented designer with an impressive resume. He studied at the Bauhaus and Royal College of Art before moving to work in Japan. His furniture work is as eclectic as his background, which is difficult to pin down stylistically between his studio’s slotted and hanging chairs.

Flatpack Cardboard Chair Furniture Design

In the same puzzle-piece tradition of the above examples in wood and metal David Graas’s stool and chair designs take the best possible advantage of the strengths of cardboard to create sturdy furniture that also has a strangely unique style and come in a compact form.

Amazing Furniture From One Piece of Plywood

The desFurniture group designs impressively simple pieces of furniture that “push the boundaries of efficiency while maintaining craftsmanship.” Much of their work is created out of a single sheet of plywood and requires no fasteners, adhesives or complex tools. These combine aspects of portable, elegant, simple and ecological furniture design. Shown above are a single-panel lounger, stool, chair and bookcase.

Single Plywood Pieces of Studio Furniture

Similar in concept to desFurniture, students of the Ryerson School of Furniture Design created a series of creative furniture pieces each from a single 4×4 foot sheet of plywood. The above desk, laptop stand and tables were each created using this strictly limited amount of material and demonstrate an impressive range of possibilities. Flatpack Creative Portable House Design

So now that you’ve seen the possibilities of flat-pack design, why not build outsdie the box with a cool flat-pack house? Talk about a great conversation piece! Alternatively, for something more within reach, how about a creative flat-pack book shelf where you flip the supports open and the shelves fall into place? Another possibility for anyone with a saw and a piece of plywood: build your own!

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Posted by Urbanist January 13th, 2008
Architecture, Urban, Urban Art, Urban Furniture, Urban Images, Various
Comments: 40

Comments

Comment from elek
Time: January 14, 2008, 12:25 am

Where do i buy them?

Comment from WebUrbanist
Time: January 14, 2008, 1:27 am

Good question! Some are for sale, some are art projects or concept pieces. Links to each project or set of projects by one group or artist are in the paragraph below the relevant set of images.

Comment from qbus
Time: January 14, 2008, 1:08 pm

forget buying them where do i fine that pattern to send to my cnc machine at work?

Comment from Speedmaster
Time: January 14, 2008, 2:05 pm

Clever stuff, I like it! ;-)

Comment from Shawn
Time: January 14, 2008, 2:10 pm

I liked them overall, some seemed impractical, others just not comfortable.

I guess I’m getting old

Comment from youamir
Time: January 14, 2008, 2:24 pm

Very talented furniture designer, i love the designs, new and exciting . I am just wondering there were no prices mentioned.

Comment from Maurice Hilarius
Time: January 14, 2008, 2:38 pm

Any chance the drawings for any of these are published somewhere?

Thanks!

Comment from Frugal
Time: January 14, 2008, 4:44 pm

The flat-pack house, if made with strong, durable, and weather proof materials, could provide affordable housing to many parts of the world where people are not as fortunate as you and I. Easy to ship too.
Very interesting post.

Comment from Rose
Time: January 15, 2008, 7:52 am

Some of it probably isn’t very comfortable … but all of it is attractive and extemely clever.

Comment from Ben Arent
Time: January 15, 2008, 10:04 am

There is a place in Brick Lane, London. Who makes these type of flat packs, they even give a carrying handel for most stuff you buy. You can see them here. http://www.untothislast.co.uk/

Comment from CaptianPlanet
Time: January 15, 2008, 11:53 pm

Still waiting on the fold-out real doll… for compact storage of course.

Comment from caterina
Time: January 16, 2008, 1:06 am

here’s a bookcase, same idea.

http://www.piegato.com/

Comment from Luis
Time: January 16, 2008, 11:06 am

Great blog!

If the economics don’t work, recycling efforts won’t either.
Http://LivePaths.com blogs about innovative entrepreneurs that make money selling recycled items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources. These includes some very cool Green online ventures, great new technologies, startups and investments opportunities.

Comment from Will
Time: January 18, 2008, 12:07 pm

Talk about ingenious, take that IKEA!

Comment from mokki
Time: January 18, 2008, 11:23 pm

I like this concept. And take a closer look at Aalto’s chairs http://www.alvaraalto.fi/alvar/design/chair/english.htm

Comment from jameswilly
Time: January 24, 2008, 7:53 am

I like it. Time to pick me up some plywood…

Comment from simon
Time: January 26, 2008, 10:20 am

Why do designers think that people with small flats want to sit on really shit flat pack furniture?

Comment from simon
Time: January 26, 2008, 10:22 am

Get a grip people is looks shit! actually you are right take it to ikea its right up their street.

Comment from Anonymous
Time: January 28, 2008, 9:46 am

عجب!!!
عجبستان

Comment from Build furniture
Time: March 5, 2008, 12:13 pm

The chairs don’t seem very comfortable. Plus I wonder with no adhesive, screws, or other fasteners how sturdy these flat pack furniture pieces would be.

Any experience with actually using these?

Comment from Egyarch
Time: March 28, 2008, 8:47 am

Nano Age Furniture, Everything is going to be deconstructured !!!