Industrial - Bachelors

BOXIT: Purposefully temporary furniture

BOXIT aims to reduce the amount of waste created by fast furniture. When moving house, the quickest and most convenient way to acquire starter furniture is from retailers like IKEA, who's furniture is usually made from unsustainable materials and are not built to last. By integrating seamlessly into the moving process, BOXIT provides users with purposefully temporary furniture, to provide them the time to find and purchase the furniture they actually want.

Grace Ferrentino

THE PROBLEM

A graphic that says Furniture discarded annually: 800,000 three-seat sofas 1,650,000 dining tables 3,400,000 coffee tables 6,850,000 chairs.
Currently, too much furniture is being thrown away. Furniture from the most popular retailers, such as IKEA, is made of cheap materials like particleboard and plastic laminates. These materials are impossible to recycle, and always end up in landfill. Even in the manufacturing process, the resin used in fiberboard is toxic for workers. Because the furniture is also not built to last, many people are forced to throw away broken furniture more often.
a graphic with circular arrows that point in order: buy, use 4-8 years, break, discard 80% goes to landfill
Australians move house more often than any other country in the world. With the influx of renters, and home ownership becoming increasingly unattainable, people are moving house more often than ever before. This means for that a lot of people, especially younger people who make up the majority of renters, are forced to treat their furniture as temporary.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Australians, particularly young Australians, move house very frequently. Current fast furniture is very cumbersome to transport, and easily breaks in the process as seen in the observational study. However, the survey found that people did not value the transportability of their furniture – price was the main factor. This counterintuitive data completely transformed the project. Instead of making sustainable furniture more attractive to young people in its design, the core issue needed to be addressed: find a way to make it more accessible in price and convenience. Because of their low income and high mobility, people seem to see no reason in investing in quality furniture. It’s almost convenient that the lifespan of fast furniture is almost the same as the number of years that renters stay in one house.

“For a $100 piece of furniture, I would rather just buy a new one than move it”

– observational study participant

There was hope in seeing that second hand marketplaces (Facebook marketplace, Gumtree, and thrift stores) were the most popular source of furniture, however, no one from the survey said they used second hand furniture exclusively – it was always in conjunction with IKEA.
All these factors combined is where the idea of temporary furniture originated from.

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Fast furniture report by Grace Ferrentino
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a render of 3 boxes sitting in a room

WHY A BOX?

A series of image instructions that show how to fold the box into a chair. First, tear the side tabs off, fold the sides inwards, then fold the top into the slots created by the tear tabs.

The core issue is the mindset that fast furniture is temporary. However, while fast furniture definitely has a short lifespan, it is not intentionally designed to be that way, it’s just poor quality. At the end of its life, it is not recyclable or biodegradable, and is simply a waste of energy and materials. Instead of fighting it, this project leans into the temporary mindset, by designing furniture that is purposefully temporary, and sustainable at the end of its lifespan.

Cardboard is a cheap and temporary material, which is why it was selected for this furniture piece. However, very few people would go out of their way to buy cardboard furniture. In fact, most people already own cardboard… in the form of moving boxes. Therefore, by serving a dual purpose as a moving box and piece of furniture, BOXIT primarily markets itself as making the moving process more convenient, while also selling the idea of cardboard furniture.

A graphic that reads: young low income renters are forced to threat furniture as temporary. Boxit allows them time to find and save up for the furniture they actually want.
The popularity of second hand sources of furniture like thrift stores, Facebook marketplace and Gumtree surpasses even IKEA. However, it is inconvenient and takes time to find and collect pieces of furniture this way, so most users will use second hand furniture in conjunction with fast furniture.

By having a piece of temporary furniture as soon as they move in, people will have more time to shop around and find the furniture they actually want, whether it’s second hand or from multiple different furniture stores. This would give current sustainable furniture stores more of a chance to capture this market, as users would have more time to research and save up for their furniture.

PURPOSEFULLY TEMPORARY DESIGN

An image of the box with a list of features: Double wall cardboard Recycleable and biodegradable Protects items better in box Strong enough to sit on when folded Water based finish Biodegradable Protects the box from tape and spills Makes it feel more like a piece of furniture Many colour options to suit different styles
Name
Grace Ferrentino BOXIT DDR part 1
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Grace Ferrentino BOXIT DDR part 2
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10 MB
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Grace Ferrentino BOXIT DDR part 3
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9 MB
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Grace Ferrentino BOXIT DDR part 4
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10 MB
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Grace Ferrentino BOXIT DDR part 5
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3 MB
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Grace Ferrentino

With a mix of industrial design, marketing, and video making skills, Grace aims to be a multi-talented creative in the industry. She specializes in broad appeal projects that spread joy, instilling a little bit of humour through her designs and advertising.