Translated by Silvia — Surfing around the Internet yesterday looking for solutions for sustainable furnishings, we fell upon FLEXIBLE LOVE. We immediately liked the name and, indeed, it sums up in two words the philosophy which hides behind this project. It is, in fact, a fantastic example of social, ecological and philanthropic design that manages to mix concrete utility and love for the environment and for others.

It is born from a very simple but effective concept: a flexible chair that uses fully the structural properties of honeycomb, applied to the working of an accordion. An incredible result of extensibility, resistance and rigidity, considering that the material used is nothing more than… paper!

A myriad of used sheets of paper that are recuperated, recycled and reused in a completely new way by the new Taiwanese designer Chishen Chiu for an extendible chair that can also be compact and multiform to host anywhere from 1 to 16 people! A group of good friends, a soccer team, a school class…

Take a look at the 2 videos and the images you will find below and in the cut.

The birth of FLEXIBLE LOVE chair was greatly influenced by Chishen Chiu’s personal experience from when he stumbled into a cardboard factory in the suburbs on Taipei. Immediately intrigued by the use of the bee’s nest structure in the industrial production of cardboard panes as substitutes for wooden ones, the young Taiwanese student developed in just a few days the concept of a chair, transformable from a seat to a bench, exploiting the huge resistance and rigidity that this material can take on in this specific structure.

Using only eco-friendly materials such as recycled paper, post-industrially rejected wood (plywood panels, chipboard panels, OSB) and ecological glue matched with pre-existing production processes, FLEXIBLE LOVE chair is thought out, from its very existence, to be a chair with a low environmental impact.

It can take on different shapes: linear, S-shaped, etc. for an almost total interactivity and adaptability with the user. Produced in 5 versions (other than the 16-person model, there’s also the one for 12 people, for 8, Couple for 2 and Mini, a 25:1 scale rendition of the Flexible Love 16) its first editions were immediately snatched out of stores.

It deserves another few words for its dimensions: 64cm tall and 56cm wide, its extendibility goes from 22.5cm in the compact version to 720cm open to the max. It weighs only 25kg, but can take a load of up to 1920kg!

An interesting piece of social and democratic design: you just need to coordinate yourself with your seating companions so as to avoid unfortunate capsizings.

+ FlexibleLove.com

An interesting presentation (in Chinese) by the designer Chishen Chiu.