Posts tagged ‘News’

This time last year (April 2010) I had just started the development of the Pennyfields chair. I had just returned home to New Zealand to see my niece and I must have sat on every chair from London to Wellington and back again, for research. I had a good idea of what makes a comfortable dining chair, but when I looked at each chair from a production point of view, I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy to accomplish things on a tight budget. There was an amazing variety of manufacturing methods which were used to make the chairs I inspected. I soon started to get a picture of what materials and processes I could to use.

The Pennyfields chair with the Whitechapel slim dining table

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Alex Whitney is the designer of the Pennyfields chair, Pli’s new bamboo and steel dining chair. In this post, Alex explains the thinking and experience which have produced the Pennyfields chair.

The idea for the Pennyfields project was to create a simple, elegant chair that required minimal tooling and that could be manufactured for a realistic cost. The choice of materials and manufacture were crucial to the project. We chose steel and bamboo because we could control the forms easily without the restriction of high tooling costs and long lead-times. The development of the chair has happened over the last six months but the design thinking extends further back, even before the development of the brief. Here is a short overview of the ideas and experiences that have resulted in the Pennyfields chair.

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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.

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.

For this post please read page 32 of the LEED 2009 for Commercial Interiors Rating System

Reusing existing furniture is an interesting topic for a furniture manufacturer to be talking to its customers about. If we encourage you to try and achieve MR Credit 3.2: Materials Reuse—furniture and furnishings we are turning away business, because to gain the LEED point for MR Credit 5 30% of your furniture and furnishing budget should be spent on salvaged, refurbished or used products. Here at Pli we realise due to environmental issues the way furniture companies do business has to change, so we are trying to come up with our own ideas before we are regulated to into a way of working that may not work for our business.

Wrap & Whitechapel refurbishment diagram

For this post please read page 31 of the LEED 2009 for Commercial Interiors Rating System

In the UK each year DEFRA studies have shown the UK construction industry is the largest producer of waste in England.

…The Government’s Waste Strategy for England 2007 identifies the good potential to increase resource efficiency in construction and reduce waste. The construction industry is a major source of waste in England, using the highest tonnage of solid material resources in any sector, over 400 million tonnes. The construction, demolition & excavation (CD&E) sector generates more waste in England than any other sector, and is the largest generator of hazardous waste, around 1.7 million tonnes…

As new regulations are created to curb this environmental catastrophe, construction waste is costing companies fortunes in disposal penalties.

To encourage participating developers to look more at the construction waste issue, LEED offers points to Material Reuse (called MR Credits). In future posts, I will talk how this relates directly to furniture reuse and refurbishment (MR Credit 3.2) and Recycled content (MR Credit 4), but before then I want to talk about how Pli offers a unique opportunity to help score points in MR Credit 3.1: Materials Reuse.

Pli’s Wrap table, which normally uses Oriented Strand Board (OSB) in its core, was designed to accept various board materials. This means it is possible to reuse a percentage of your own project’s construction waste in the manufacture of your new Wrap tables. We will work with your construction company to divert suitably selected waste boards back into the core of your tables. Those tables will be treated by Pli as new and covered by all our warranties.

Points earned from using the recycled board would naturally fall under MR Credit 4: Recycled Content. However, considering you are using recycled waste from your own construction site, we also think you have a strong case for including the tables in your points calculation for MR Credit 3.1.

When making a decision, most people look for outside endorsement. We at Pli value the opinions of companies like Steelcase and Herman Miller, who are the market leaders in the office furniture industry. Both these companies are early adopters of LEED-thinking and it’s application to furniture design. They see the value to the customer of furniture that will help contribute towards the credentials of green building projects. Herman Miller even sets an example: its European Headquarters at the VillageGreen facility in Chippenham, England, was one of the first buildings in the UK to gain LEED NC Gold (new construction) certification.

BREEAM is the UK version of the US based LEED building certification system. BREEAM is a good system but does not have as much emphasis on interior furnishings. Fixed furnishing, such as fitted cabinets, falls under BREEAM but loose furniture does not. We want our products to make as much impact on a project as possible. Using BREEAM, our furniture would be purchased in the spirit of the project, but using LEED it makes a positive contribution to the overall interior project rating.

Example of the LEED points label for commercial interiors

The following posts in the “LEED & Pli” series will explain exactly how our products will earn points for your project. Over the certification process, Pli’s products can help towards 10 out of 100 possible LEED Commercial Interior certification points, and at least 1 of the 6 extra points available in the Innovation in Design section. (see LEED label above).

With the difference between the various levels of certification being 10 points, your choice of furniture could be the difference between just certifying your project and achieving silver, gold, or platinum certification. Considering the cost of the furniture compared to the total cost of some building projects, there are valuable points to be earned.

As Pli develops as a company, we are always trying to find new ways to express how our furniture can help you and your projects become greener. Our latest idea is to help you, our customers, to understand how our furniture can help towards gaining LEED ( an internationally recognized green building certification system) accreditation.

Over the next few months we will be looking at some of the different criteria involved, with regards to furniture and commercial interiors, in gaining LEED accreditation . The first step for you is to visit the LEED website, then download the LEED 2009 for Commercial Interiors Rating System and become familiar with the sections that will be relevant to the series. Below is an outline of the posts with relevant section heading and pages which you can refer back to the LEED 2009 for Commercial Interiors Rating System.

1. Why LEED? an introduction to the LEED system and why we choose it.
2. Material reuse. Using building waste in furniture manufacturer. MR Credit 3.1 page 31
3. Material reuse – Furniture & Furnishings. How refurbished furniture can save waste. MR Credit 3.2 page 32
4. Recycled content. Incorporating recycled material into new furniture. MR Credit 4 page 33
5. Regional materials – Manufacture. How using locally manufactured products help. MR Credit 5 page 34
6. Regional materials – Extraction , harvesting & recovery. Where does every component come from and why it is important. MR Credit 5 page 34
7. Rapidly renewable materials. The use of fasting growing material in furniture. MR Credit 6 page 35
8. Certified wood. The importance of using certified wood in your projects. MR Credit 7 page 36
9. Low-emitting Material. How furniture effects the air quality of your interior. IEQ Credit 4.5 page 52-53
10. Now & into the future. A summary of the series with a look at future directions for LEED & PLI.

Pumpkin TV, a British educational film production company, has made a film about the Reee chair‘s story. The documentary covers the development of the Reee chair from the initial concept to the final manufacturing process. You can view excerpts here, including interviews with Guy Robinson, designer of the Reee chair, as well as Christopher and Alex from Pli.

For more information abut the Pumpkin film, visit the website at www.pumpkintv.co.uk or have a browse through their YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/ChannelPumpkin

What do Linux, Nokia and WD-40 have in common? On the surface, they appear to be large organizations that offer services in completely different fields. Dig a little deeper and a common resource occurs, a resource for innovations. At the core of many companies, innovation is the driving force. If you lose that drive, the competitors will take over. However, not all companies have brilliant researchers or scientists working in an underground lab with unlimited budget to ensure their next launch will be successful. They will just ask you what to do.

Enter open source innovation; it is not the newest idea in town and it has been around in the scientific community for quite some time. And more recently, it was featured heavily in the community of software development which led to the creation of Creative Commons. It is a license for sharing data under a limited right of usage, which allows open sourcing to be done more securely. Nevertheless, this is a relatively new idea in the world of product design; an idea where innovation is developed by external sources, particularly the users themselves.

International license for open source sharing

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