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(Check out our complete collection of 70 Works of Recycled Art and Design.)
Do you ever get sick of people telling you to recycle? Well, these furniture designers prove recycling can be a lot more interesting than stuffing cans, bottles and cardboard into the proper containers. A ‘bathtub couch’ and ’shopping cart chair’ may not be your cup of tea but there is something for everyone in this collection. Who knows, you might even be inspired to find new uses for old stuff around the house after seeing some of these bizarre furniture designs.
The Castor Canadensis design collective has a solution for folks who aren’t sure what to do with old fluorescent light tubes: use them as light fixtures! While the design is not overly complex it is rather elegant in its simplicity. Also, the fixtures are great for diffusing the light and work remarkably well to illuminate an interior living or dining space.
While not exactly ergonomic the adaption of a shopping cart into a chair seems rather reasonable once you see the result: a detailed and structurally-sound seat that bends and gives slightly where needed but also provides a good deal of support and a place to rest one’s arms. Still, these and other shopping cart chairs might be better suited to a BBQ setting than to a formal dining set.
Old sports equipment has a way of accumulating. Some things we outgrow, some things we ‘replace’ only to find the originals later behind some pile in the garage. Instead of discarding all of that stuff why not find a clever way to reuse it? Maybe the skateboard table or baseball bat chair aren’t your style but perhaps you know a sports fan in need of a sporty recycled furniture birthday present.
Not every piece of ‘recycled furniture’ has to be fancy. These crushed-can furniture pieces are extremely simple in theory but quite colorful in practice. They aren’t suited for every interior design scheme but they are robust and would work great for outdoor furniture in a rugged environment. After all, would anyone really notice the rust on these?
If you’ve ever remodeled a bathroom you know just how big and awkward old bathtubs can be and getting one out of the house to be recycled or scrapped is no easy task. With a few simple modifications the designers over at Reestore have found a way to deal with these clunky relics. Whether the solution is a potentially romantic love seat or an entirely kitch creation is, of course, in the eye of the beholder.
A dishwasher drum seems an unlikely candidate for reuse until you see this recycled dishwasher drum table in action. Once transformed, this odd object is surprisingly suited to its new roll as the base of a simple cylindrical side table. The perforations in the site create interesting lighting patters and the hollow center makes this a light and versatile addition to any home.
Once you smash and bend that bike wheel enough it has nowhere to go but the dumpster, right? Wrong if you’re Andrew Gregg who distorts these seemingly broken pieces even further in the pursuit of a higher goal. The results clearly show the objects’ origins but are nonetheless original, dynamic, eye-catching and even useful compositions.
As everything related to computers gets smaller fewer and fewer people need their old CDs, particularly the burned copies of things that are somewhere on hard drive or a iPhone anyway. Simple reuses for these included coasters and gaudy dangling decorations of course, but the chair above is a pretty compact way to reuse loads of them all at once. That being said, one has to wonder whether this CD chair could possibly be comfortable.
Not every piece of old clothing is fit for the Salvation Army. Some things are too full of holes or, well, let’s face it, too embarrassingly outdated for you to subject even a total stranger to. With this simple and material-light clothing container furniture you can simply stuff your old clothes (ideally after one last wash of course) into a new shape and use as plush and padded furniture.
Newspaper has to be one of the most ubiquitous recyclables on the planet and processing newspapers into reusable materials is itself energy-consuming. Instead, people with the time and inclination could take a hint from the above design: folding, wrapping and weaving newspaper can create surprisingly strong, naturally variegated and colorful recycled newspaper baskets.
Cleaning out the drawers always seems to turn up a surprising number of throwaway pens. By the time we get to these many are dried out or otherwise dysfunctional. Up close it may look tacky but from a distance this disposable pen chandelier has some grace to it. Plus if you ever needed a pen you’d at least know where to find one.
Retro is great but for most of us the faked retro items at the local hipster shop are just a bit too contrived. Lamponi Lamps is the real deal: they use vintage appliances and automobile parts to create elaborate and remarkably elegant lamps. There is a kind of retrofuturism at work here with an authenticity rarely found in faux-historical interior furnishings. There are some more great green furniture items and unusually cool recycling projects at Inhabitat and Ecoble as well as some neat recycled art over at CultCase.
Check Out These Great Related Articles:
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The Best Bookcases and Bookcase Designs
If you or a book-lover you know are stuck on how to redecorate your urban dwelling and store your favorite volumes here are twenty unusually clever shelving solutions.
63 Comments
March 27th, 2008 at 6:00 am
Surprisingly beautiful. Thanks!
March 27th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Nice works in recycle.
March 27th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Washing machine drums also make excellent outdoor fire pits!
March 27th, 2008 at 9:19 am
This is reusing not recycling.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Same thing, different words.
March 27th, 2008 at 11:05 am
it’s upcycling. :) and it’s great!
March 27th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
love the bathtub couches!
March 27th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Think outside the square–one can achieve wonders.
March 27th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Nice selection! Congrats to WebUrbanist!
I really appreciate the way designers awaken people to recycling and reusing discarded materials through creativity and style.
Here there are also other interesting links about charming furniture, home decor and stuff from scrap and waste materials:
http://www.treehugger.com/file.....ld_sui.php
http://design.blogsociale.it/2.....k-tea-set/
http://www.paulvillinski.com/Default.aspx?tabid=45
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/.....-by-nendo/
http://blogsociale.it/design/w.....razi-a.jpg
March 28th, 2008 at 4:42 am
Bath came out cool
March 28th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Awesome. Just, awesome!
March 28th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Love all of the creativity, very nice the bathtub couches
March 28th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Great…
March 29th, 2008 at 1:08 am
That is nothing but awesome! Great post..
March 29th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
I want a cart chair.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:59 am
Is there a page 2 for this article?
The title said “20 Eye-Catching Pieces of ‘Recycled’ Urban Furniture”
but I only see 12.
March 31st, 2008 at 4:41 pm
No one would notice the rust on the aluminum cans because aluminum doesn’t rust.
April 1st, 2008 at 5:23 am
Very good ideais!!!
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:52 am
I like the couch that is made out of the old bath tub. That bath tub looked like an antique though so I wonder if it was worth it…
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:25 am
Amazing. I want so desperately to find something creative I can do, and seeing work like this only makes me yearn more. I admire such artist talent!
April 4th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I just have to tell you that I love the Tub sofa!!!
May 8th, 2008 at 7:40 am
The “dishwasher drum table” is in fact a clothes dryer drum. I sealed my last one with silicone, using the clear window off the door over the large front opening, and buried it.
Now i have a stainless steel lily pond. It’s been in the ground for nine years now and still looks fine.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
You’ve got a tumble dishwasher?
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Very cool. In fact, they are awesome!!
June 19th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Dear Friends,
Do you sell the crushed can chairs?
Thx
Pete
July 14th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I love all of the items shown…..will you all show more?
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:28 am
The innovative architecture of these pieces will accentuate the ambiance of any hotel, restaurant or home.Creating modern furniture store is to match unique materials with extraordinary designs.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:31 pm
My question is how much does the cd chair weigh? I know 100 cds weigh 3.3 pounds. That chair has to made of at least 500 cd’s wide at 1.2mm per cd = 2 feet by 10 columns tall. Just guessing the weight of the chair without the infrastructure is about 165 pounds. That’s ridiculous…
Now Polywood is light and made from recycled milk jugs. Definately not as pretty but much more feassible for the average guy tomove around….. artistic recycled furniture is not typically feasible outside of an art studio…
October 1st, 2008 at 1:41 pm
there is a link error at the top of the article, the link> check out our complete… isn’t going to more recycled stuff but abandon buildings instead (cool too tho)
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:25 am
….And my family thinks I’m weird w/ some of the things I recycle by reusing! This gives me more food for thought!
BTW, dryer & washer drums make great compost bins.
October 5th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Great post! I have a cool green products book with some of these creations showcased in it. I love the CD chair and the used fluorescent light bulb light fixture.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:44 am
seus trabalhos são fantasticos, gostaria de recebelos via e-mail mesmos eu não sabendo nada de ingles, é muito bom adimiralo ficarei muito feliz se me enviar! tenha um otimo dia e parabens!
October 25th, 2008 at 7:09 am
love it! that would actually probably work well with my style … will have to keep this in mind when i move into a house and am starting to contemplate decorating it.
we have a local recycled fashion contest, where people construct fabulous outfits made out of recycled goods and model them in the contest! i haven’t been yet, must make it out next year.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:23 am
who leaves a comment in spanish
November 14th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
It’s not spanish.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:46 am
It is like a sale, may even have ordered that some of this if it was in my city
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