Randwall Eco Chair, birch plywood and recycled plastic

Jüri Kermik was among 24 international designers who were invited to join Finnish furniture designers to contribute to the EcoDesign 2009 Exhibition in Helsinki. The project which had started in 2008 was coordinated through a staged submission of design statements, sketches and finished designs, culminating in the exhibition which was held in conjunction with the Habitare Furniture Fair, 9 – 14 September 2009. The exhibition, initiated and curated by Professor Yrjö Kukkapuro, showcased nearly 100 proposals for ecological chair designs including new work from Eero Aarnio, Simo Heikkila, Jasper Morrison, Kita Toshiyuki, Zhu Xiaojie, Shigeru Ban and Matteo Thun. Kermik contributed to the exhibition project with the Randwall (eco) Chair which was developed as a continuation of his earlier ‘Encounters’ project. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue featuring chair designs and their EcoAnalysis based on aspects of the design such as foresight, planning and design, materials, production process and the lifecycle of the product. There were more than sixty thousand visitors during the five days and positive feedback was received in international and national media. Randwall Chair is designed in the ‘shared space’ where contemporary industrial, digital and traditional methods co-exist. Developed as part of the ‘Encounters’ project it aims to trace invisible connections between Old and New by intentionally overlapping and cross-referencing methodologies, structural types and techniques which are/were inherent to a specific technological age. The structural type of the Randwall Chair evolved from a speculative attempt to ‘reconstruct’ a regional archetype which never existed. Randwall as a geological and linguistic reference point is used to connect it to the region of Sõrve peninsula, Saaremaa. First development models and prototypes of the Randwall Chair, which explored traditional carpenter techniques, were made from ash and birch sourced and seasoned in Sõrve. The narrative methodology of ‘dismantling’ and ‘reconstructing’ a chair has been used to test ways of engaging with sustainable practice at different levels of design and production. The construction and detailing of the Randwall (eco) Chair supports the idea of inter changeability of materials and production techniques, both Old and New. Regional wood can be used in combination with components cut and formed from industrially manufactured board materials such as plywood, engineered wood and recycled plastics. No glue joints are involved in the process of assembly. Traditional joints are modified to interlock key structural parts and the whole chair is fastened with eight mechanical fixings.