News & features

CAFOD, a leading development charity helping the poor in more than 40 countries worldwide, has selected Pli’s range of eco-friendly furniture for their new London headquarters. CAFOD (the Catholic Agency For Overseas Development) moved in May 2010 from its long-standing HQ in Stockwell to a prestigious new building on Westminster Bridge Road in central London. The ‘Excellent’ BREEAM-rated new headquarters was designed by Black Architecture, a sustainable urban architects practice based close by in Waterloo.

CAFOD’s facilities manager Quentin Padgett said,

“Our staff and volunteers love the tables and chairs supplied by Pli. They fit well in our naturally ventilated and low energy office building. The use of recycled and recyclable material fits well with our aim to reduce our impact on the environment. The building has been designed to reduce running costs and to have a robust quality, and the furniture supplied by Pli reflects this.”

Whitechapel bamboo tables and Reee recycled chairs at CAFOD

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Pli is holding a summer sale of eco-friendly furniture at our workshop in London. We have introduced further price reductions – and some new pieces – to make it even better value for money. To view the sale items and buy online, go to http://www.plidesign.co.uk/sale.

Check back from time to time: we are adding prototypes and display samples as well as end-of-the-line stock all the time, to make room for new deliveries in the next few weeks.

There are 40-65% discounts available so do take advantage and pick up a bargain price on some lovely furniture. There’s free delivery to UK addresses, too.

Have a look at the sale list below…
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In this video Jens Mathiasen, Pli’s agent in Copenhagen, talks about the Reee chairs we donated to the Copenhagen Klimaforum at COP15, 2009.

West Dulwich-based design studio Pli has started supplying its new range of bamboo and steel occasional tables to London’s iconic department store Liberty. The Whitechapel collection of coffee tables and side tables was inspired by the Utility Furniture Scheme which defined British furniture design of the 1940s and ’50s. Pli has combined sustainable raw materials with cutting-edge UK manufacturing to offer a range of Utility furniture for our times.

Whitechapel occasional tables at Liberty

The tables offer rounded corners and hidden joints to create a quietly elegant design that is also strong, sturdy and, above all, useful. The solid bamboo panels are naturally stain resistant and very hard wearing. The laser-cut pressed steel legs are powder-coated in either cream or black-olive colour-ways.

The Whitechapel tables can be bought at Liberty on Great Marlborough Street in London’s West End from June 2010.

Pli launched a new collection of bamboo dining tables, for eco-friendly British homes, at Grand Designs Live in May 2010. The dining tables are an addition to the ground-breaking range of bamboo occasional tables that Pli displayed at 100% Design 2009. Pli is a London-based design and manufacturing company which specialises in making sustainable furniture in the UK.

The Whitechapel dining tables combine super-strong solid bamboo panels with laser-cut steel legs and supporting bamboo beams. Pli’s Director, Christopher Pett, explains, “The principle of this design is to use bamboo for its unique properties, not simply as a replacement for wood. As well as being a fast-growing, natural material, bamboo also has strength and hardness that most varieties of timber can’t match. It’s naturally stain resistant and it has a beautiful, distinctive grain. These features make bamboo a perfect material to use in contemporary homes for casual kitchen and dining tables.”

4-seater kitchen table

Pli’s design manager, Alex Whitney, adds, “We wanted to create a range of furniture that is effortlessly sustainable, from the sourcing of the raw materials to the local manufacturing and the ease of disassembly for regular refurbishing. All the parts can be replaced or refurbished with very little effort. We use a common leg across the whole series so our customers can buy a bigger table top if they need one, without needing to replace the steel legs. They can even have the leg colour changed regularly if that’s what they want.”

Pli at Grand Designs Live 2010

The Whitechapel dining table range starts with a 4-seater table, 90 x 90 cm square, for kitchens, lounge dining and restaurants. The ’slim’ dining table, 160 cm x 80 cm, seats 6 and is aimed at diners in houses and flats where space is at a premium. The full-size dining table seats 8 comfortably, with a 201 x 90 cm top. Pli has produced a custom 10-seater table with a 240 x 90 cm top in response to a customer request at Grand Designs Live, and this has now entered the range as the largest dining table that Pli can make from a single bamboo panel.

Custom 10-seater dining table

In three pieces and at an impressive 3.7 metre length, the 12-seater Whitechapel boardroom table is the largest table that Pli produces. It’s designed for contemporary, eco-friendly offices and features a very large cable-management tray in the centre. the boardroom table is designed to come apart to form two separate desks.

Whitechapel boardroom table

The Whitechapel dining table range can come packaged with Reee chairs, made from 100% recycled computer games consoles. Pli can even match the leg colours of the tables and chairs to meet our customers’ needs. The Reee chairs are comfortable, easy to keep clean and refurbish and they stack for space-saving storage.

Bamboo dining table top

The Whitechapel dining tables are available in a variety of laminated solid bamboo panel configurations. All the dining tables are supplied with at least 3 layers of bamboo forming the top panel, to make it stable and strong for the lifetime of the product. Customers can select different colours and grains to match their interior, with the ‘caramel’ colour proving by far the most popular so far.

Laser-cut steel legs support the solid bamboo frame

The Whitechapel dining tables are available for contract customers directly from Pli and domestic customers can see the tables at Places and Spaces in Clapham or by appointment at Pli’s workshop. Pli will hold a warehouse sale of the prototype Whitechapel tables we have produced in the lead-up to the launch of our new range. The sale will run throughout the last 2 weeks in June, from 21 June to 2 July.

Reee chairs stacking 10 high

The new frame design of the Reee chair allows you to stack them 10 high. The 100% recycled plastic seat nests with the high-tensile steel tube frame so the chairs don’t roll forward off the stack, making it very stable.

In line with manual handling guidelines, we recommend that you do not attempt to move more than 4-5 chairs at a time, in a stack, if you are moving them on your own without mechanical assistance. We can supply chair trolleys that allow you to move a stack of 10 Reee chairs safely.

The footprint of 10 Reee chairs stacked together is only 12% bigger than a single chair, so they are very space-efficient for storage and handling.

Other benefits of the Reee chair:

• Competitive price
• Comfortable ergonomic design
• 100% recycled plastic from computer games consoles
• Made in UK
• Designed for disassembly
• Easy to repair and refurbish
• Available in three frame colours: black, stone grey and light blue

You can find out all about the Reee chair’s specifications here.
You can read about the background to the unique source of recycled plastic in the Reee chair here.
Contact Pli to get a quote or find a dealer that can supply your home or contract needs.

Three shops are now selling the Whitechapel range in store. Pli launched the bamboo-and-steel Whitechapel design at 100% in 2009 and the range has grown during 2010 to encompass every size of table from small bedside tables to huge boardroom tables.

Liberty, the world-famous department store on the corner of Regent Street and Great Marlborough Street in London’s West End, now sells the Whitechapel side tables and occasional tables as part of their collection of contemporary British furniture.

If you’re in north London, go to twentytwentyone in Islington. They have a fantastic collection of modern furniture designs from Vitra, plus the best in contemporary furniture design. The Whitechapel tables are part of their new range of contemporary furniture designs. Twentytwentyone also manages contract furniture projects.

Clapham’s coolest furniture shop, Places and Spaces, is the exclusive UK agent for world-famous Dutch design house Droog. They sell a carefully selected range of furniture and accessories for style-conscious customers. The full range of Whitechapel tables, from coffee tables to casual dining tables, is available to buy from Places and Spaces now. Read more »

1-9 May 2010 at London Excel, Docklands

Pli is exhibiting our Whitechapel tables and Reee chairs at Grand Designs Live 2010. Come and try our products, chat to our designers and take furniture away with you: we’ll have stock on-site that you can buy on the day.

OFFER: Buy our furniture and recover the cost of your ticket to Grand Designs!
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We took a stand at the spring Midcentury.Modern exhibition last Sunday. This is a twice-yearly furniture fair held in Dulwich College, just down the road from our workshop. It’s been going for a few years but this is the first chance we’ve had to show our furniture there.

Pli at Midcentury.Modern

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What if you have a great idea, a great prototype or a great one-off piece of furniture? You want to turn this opportunity into a product you can sell in large quantities. Pli’s production service allows designers to develop a ready-to-manufacture production model on a pay-as-you-go basis.

This gives you access to our applied knowledge of the furniture industry and our proven manufacturing network, without the overheads of full-time staff, expensive technical resources or costly learning curves. In other words, we can save you time and money — and we can give you a saleable product with the benefit of all our experience.

Pli has offered expertise and know-how to other designers since 2005, resulting in the development of good products that would otherwise stayed as just good ideas. Take advantage of our production service to make your product idea into a reality. Read more »