Furniture

You would think it were some sort of wonder material. The way hotshot European designers and furniture manufacturers have taken up with plastic over the last decade--each year more jubilantly--it would seem as though this couldn't be the stuff of Tupperware and ordinary life.

And the answer is: It isn't ... and it is.

The plastic that is being moulded into "designer" furniture these days, represents some of the most cutting-edge advances in science and technology to hit this segment of the furniture world since its heyday in the 1970s.

It was then that manufacturers such as Kartell of Italy started to harness the moulding process and more complex plastics to create stylish synthetic furniture that could be mass-produced. And add big-name designers Philippe Starck and Ron Arad to the picture.

On a mission to bring good design to the masses, Starck created several high-style plastic chairs for Italian manufacturers, who were able to bring them to market for around $150 apiece. Arad, working with Kartell, performed similar magic with his Bookworm bookshelf--originally done in steel as limited-edition furniture, now refashioned in affordable plastic.

The design world stood in awe. Consumers ate it up. And a plastic revival was born.

These days, everybody who's anybody in international design is doing something ground breaking in plastic seating, tables or even cabinetry.

But the plastic they're working with "has evolved drastically" from the 1970s, according to Ivan Luini, president of Kartell US Inc. "There are plastics now that were not available back then," Luini continues. Such as: a kind of polypropylene (normally hard and dense like wood) that feels cushy like foam, but isn't. Last spring in Milan, Kartell introduced a spongy plastic chair made from the techno-polymer.

And there are new production techniques too.

"What I am impressed with in what a company like Magis does or what Kartell does, is that they are using plastic as a noble material"--not as a cheap substitute for something else, says Alan Heller, the uncommon American doing designer plastics.

The molten material allows for shapes and designs that simply could not be done in any other material, says Heller, whose New York-based company works with Italian maestro Mario Bellini and other top European designers to create Modern plastic furniture. Manufacturing is done in Iowa and Italy.

Rotational moulding is one of the most recent triumphs of the Italian furniture world. It allows for the mass production of large plastic furniture that is hollow and therefore less costly and cumbersome. In a technique similar to the one used to make hollow chocolate Easter eggs, plastic powder is dispersed by centrifugal force through a hot mould that rotates randomly on several axes. After a matter of minutes, the powder evenly coats the walls of the mould--and a chair or sofa is sprung free, holding secret its empty inside.

Source is The Chicago Tribune