Tan Pitiyanuwat

Reborn Furniture

Throughout the world, waste is increasing more and more and it becomes a serious environmental problem. We have to spend a lot of budget, energies, space and time in order to solve this problem. In particular, The UK produces around 400 million tones of waste annually - a quarter of waste is from households and offices (www.environment-agency.gov.uk, 2006) that often dismissed massive undesired furniture, even it is in a perfect good condition or need a little repair.  This causes a huge waste and depicts an unsustainable drain on resources.  Moreover, toxic components that effect allergic reactions on human, CFCs that exhausted greenhouse gas, and many other chemical substances are used in order to manufacture new furniture (www.waste-online.org, 2006). It shows that furniture was thrown away not because it was broken or can’t be used. Furniture doesn’t have meaning enough for user to keep or repair so as to use it as long as possible. For the reasons above, I am interested in studying about “Reborn Furniture”. It is the furniture that is added psychological value or meaningfulness that derived from user. One feature of psychological meaningfulness is defined as familiarity (Underwood and Schulz, 1960).  That means the furniture related to cherished possessions, relationships and memories to owner.  Thus, the user would use this piece of furniture of his/her long life.  I believed that this is the good way to save our environment and promote sustainable use of furniture. By making reborn furniture with owner’s participation in design process is demonstrating a healthy concern for environmental problems and a more efficient use of limited resources in the more competition world.

In my opinion, every object has a meaning in itself. The meaning depends on how long users use that objects. Generally, objects don’t show how it change too much so it makes users doesn’t realize the object’s meaning. Therefore, I tried to design furniture, which can be changed in order to remind user’s memory. For the second approach, designers should give user a chance to be a part of design process. That is a way to create ownership and object’s meaning in terms of mental value. Both ideas purpose that people realize the meaning of object and they will use objects as long as possible.

 

 

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Tan Pitiyanuwat

tanpitiyanuwat@yahoo.com