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Haworth Repurposes Retired Workstations

A prototype is currently featured in an exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Mairi Beautyman -- Interior Design, 7/19/2005 12:00:00 AM

Past-its-prime Haworth office furniture can now get a second chance on life. The furniture manufacturer teams up with Chicago design school Archeworks, founded in 1994 by architect Stanley Tigerman and interior designer Eva Maddox, to redirect Haworth office cubes destined for landfill.

Close to three million tons of office furniture and furnishings end up in these landfills every year, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates.

Haworth’s vice president of architecture and design, Georgy Olivieri, was inspired by a client’s above and beyond sustainability efforts. She solicited a multi-disciplinary team of eight Archeworks students to address the environmental and social impact of furniture products going to landfill, with a "radical" new way of thinking.

Ideas--including a toy box, a day bed and a product called the Unit for Living, a piece that incorporates a bed, storage and a desk--poured in. "Sustainable Furniture: Chicago Designers Respond," a sustainable furniture exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center running through August, currently features Unit for Living.

For the project, the student team launched a Web site and published a do-it-yourself handbook entitled Take Your Cube Home With You.

"The commercial design profession, by its nature, creates an enormous amount of waste," says Eva Maddox, Archeworks co-founder. "We selected this prototype project in partnership with Haworth to build a case for the design industry to support the future health and well being of society."