Archive for May 2009

In the food industry there is a major push to buy “Local”. This movement, as well as cutting carbon footprints, helps pump the pound back into the UK economy. This patriotic movement has bought to light that the UK produces top quality products and you don’t have to go much further than your doorstep to find them.

Can the same patriotism that has led the masses to buy British pork convince the British furniture industry that they might sell some more tables if they make their product in the UK rather than abroad? With British design being so strong it seems a bit of a shame that we ship our manufacture off-shore to reduce the price rather than designing for UK industries.

Simon Andrews, designer of the Wrap table

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The 4th annual Grand Designs awards were held in London on 30 April. Pli’s Reee chair was short-listed in the best furniture category. I went along to the awards ceremony with Guy Robinson, the designer of the Reee chair, to find out how we got on and who the other short-listed companies were. It was a pretty glamorous black tie event, dubbed the Oscars of the design and architecture industries in the UK.

We were short-listed with 5 other companies and their designers in the Best Furniture Product category: here’s the full list of nominees.

And the winner was…

Russell Pinch is a favourite designer of mine. The Yves writing desk is a beautiful design and a worthy winner.

We were really amazed and delighted to be nominated in such illustrious company: Pli was easily the smallest and youngest business in the Furniture short-list which was stocked, apart from us, with businesses we admire and try to emulate like Vitra, Habitat, Ligne Roset, Case and Pinch.

I guess the secret ingredient to our chair, that got us on to the short-list with these inspiring companies, is the 100% recycled consumer plastic content. That and the great design by Guy at Sprout. A nod from an illustrious panel of Grand Designs judges is a very gratifying endorsement for the work and support of the many many people who have helped us bring the chair to market.

Congratulations to Russell Pinch, and also to my friend Naomi Dean whose all-FSC kitchen design for Harvey Jones won the Kitchen Systems category. You can see details about the winners and runners-up here…

http://www.granddesignsawards.com/best-furniture-design

Just a quick note to thank all the students who have applied for the internships we posted a few weeks ago. Out of a long-list of around 40 strong candidates, we have picked 5 students to undertake the projects we specified for this year. Congratulations to Sarah, Faye, Narut, Julia and Adina.

I’ll be contacting all the candidates in the next few days to let them know the results of our deliberations. It has been a genuinely difficult decision process and there are so many amazing student portfolios that we have seen, demonstrating really well developed thinking on sustainable design.

Although the summer 2009 internships are all now taken, I’d still like to encourage students to get in touch, tell us about what you’re up to and be part of the conversation we’re promoting about sustainable product design in the UK.