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Tomorrow is Too Late

The Top Stitch #13

July 10, 2020 by Lee Ness Leave a Comment

The Top Stitch

The Top Stitch interior design

Your weekly digest of news in the world of Design, Upholstery, Furniture and Interior Design, brought to you by Global Upholstery Solutions.

15 furniture designs made from repurposed cardboard – Dezeen

Innovative storage solutions, children’s toys and a music amplifier are among the designs made from repurposed cardboard that have been shortlisted in Dezeen and Samsung’s Out of the Box Competition.

The contest sought innovative designs for the home that can be made by repurposing cardboard packaging, to encourage users to creatively reuse the box their television is shipped in rather than throwing it away.

Read more….

Circular by Design: Wendy Andreu Turns Selvedges Into Innovative New Material – Design Milk

The circular economy is a proposed alternative to our traditional ‘take, make, waste’ model of production and consumption – one that offers hope in the face of environmental catastrophes from climate change to ocean plastic. Designing out waste and pollution, keeping materials and products in use and regenerating our natural environment are so important to contemporary design that we wanted to create a dedicated space for the projects bringing these ideas to life. Circular by Design, a fortnightly column by longtime contributor Katie Treggiden, will start by exploring the potential of waste as a valuable new raw material.

Read more….

How Can Designers Responsibly Use Science Fiction as Inspiration? – AIGA Eye on Design

You’ve probably seen it a dozen times: Tom Cruise waves his hands in front of a blank, glassy screen, and it whirs to life with glowing data and graphics. This vision, from the 2001 Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report, is classic UX bait. In the late 1990s, when Spielberg and his team convened for an “ideas summit” to brainstorm the film’s trademark interaction, ambient gesture control and multi-touch screens were still nascent technologies. Touch screens had been around for years in some form, but they lacked the streamlined tactile control that Cruise showcased in the film.

Read more….

Interior Design Has A Race Problem – And It Needs To Be Addressed – Vogue

Amid calls for a more representative and diverse industry, many working within the interiors world have stayed silent. But those trailblazers auguring for change will not go back to “posting pretty pictures” just yet, as Jessica Salter finds.

For a world that celebrates – and often steals from – global culture and diversity, behind the glossy exterior, the interior design industry is ironically and startlingly uniform. From lists of top-50 UK designers to panel speakers to homes that appear in magazine shoots, those featured are often white.

Read more….

Human-Centric Design – Electrolux Kitchen Design

Human-centric design, focusing on the experiences of actual users, is what we do at Electrolux. It allows for culinary experiments in the kitchen and streamlines housework in order to enable more family-time, all while improving the aesthetics of ones home. Design is at the heart of our being, and behind every new innovation there is a consumer with one less problem in their everyday life.

Read more….

What is Wabi Sabi and why it is the most distinct design style – Architecture and Design

Wabi Sabi is a concept that originated in Japan—it opposes many typical decoration rules. The idea disregards absolute symmetry, and the need for perfection in everything. More than a decorative style, Wabi Sabi is a philosophy of life; a way of living and perceiving the world, with the aim of peacefully accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay inherent in life. Author Richard R. Powell states in his book “The Wabi Sabi cultivates all that is authentic by recognising three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is complete and nothing is perfect.”

Read more….

Pantone unveils app to colour match with “real life” – Design Week

Colour company Pantone has revealed a digital platform and matching product for designers which aim to streamline the colour decision-making process.

Pantone Connect rolls out across mobile, web and the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of applications. The mobile app provides access to the complete range of Pantone’s colour spectrum.

Read more….

No Panic, Just Love! – Archipanic

The LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual) community is big in the architecture and design business. We collected some of the most influential and honorable projects advocating for equal rights as well as tackling violence and discrimination.

Read more….

Design Your Conceptual Project to Address Our Changing Climate! – Warming

competition intro

Our world is changing.

Imagine Miami Beach permanently underwater, hurricanes constantly clashing against Manhattan, devastating droughts in London, and heatwaves that render Barcelona unlivable.

A future like this currently occupies our imagination but inches closer to reality each day. 

How will our built environment react to rising sea levels, extended droughts, climbing temperatures, and other symptoms of global warming? How can our buildings and cities prevent the severity of natural disasters, degrading air quality, melting ice caps, and climate change at large?

Read more….

Bakelite: The Georg Kargl Collection – dexigner

As the first genuine plastic, Bakelite revolutionized the everyday culture from the 1920s to the 1950s. On view at the MAK from July 15 through October 26, ‘Bakelite: The Georg Kargl Collection’ exhibition is devoted to this extraordinary raw material.

300 objects from the private collection of the Viennese gallery owner Georg Kargl (1955‒2018) provide an insight into the material’s versatile possibilities of use and its aesthetic legacy.

Bakelite, the first industrially manufactured, fully synthetic raw material based on resins, enabled the cheap mass production of everyday objects in an almost unlimited variety of forms-from telephones to picnic boxes and radios. The MAK exhibition traces the history of Bakelite from its meteoric rise to an icon of modern product culture to its displacement by other plastics on account of ecological considerations.

Read more….

Where are the Black Designers 

Where are the Black Designers is an initiative which aims to give a platform to creatives of color. By connecting designers, educators, and creative leaders we hope to start a dialogue about change in and out of the design industry.

Read more….

A Guide to Design for Disassembly – Arch Daily

The concept of Design for Disassembly (DfD for short) gained increasing traction in recent years, as it addresses the growing concern around the high consumption of resources and low recycling rate within the construction industry. The following article details on the method and features guidelines for a design process that facilitates the dismantlement of future buildings, with the scope of providing a better understanding of this principle within the broader framework of the current practice and circular economy.

Read more….

Earth Day 2020

April 23, 2020 by Lee Ness 1 Comment

International Womens Day

To celebrate Earth Day 2020, and because sustainability is close to our hearts, we thought we would share our research on sustainable products from our fabric suppliers, carried out by our Materials Manager, Lindsay Watson-Jones.

Please feel free to add your comments below.

Eco Fabrics and Sustainability in the Upholstery Industry

It’s plain to see that we are in a growing world and industry where sustainability, recycling and repurposing is at the forefront of projects and is becoming more and more an important credential or specification. With this being the case, the information gathered below will enable us to assist those customers who are required to include such accredited fabrics to their portfolio.

Before we start, here’s an interesting note:

Ref: Tree Hugger.com

“High-tech” isn’t what you’d normally think of when it comes to fabric, but in recent years, that’s exactly what it has become. Innovation has brought about revolutionary new materials and processes, and one rapidly changing industry. Several different criteria go into making what can be called an eco textile, but seven basic questions you should ask are:

  1. Is it recyclable?
  2. Is it made of recyclable materials?
  3. Is it easily biodegradable?
  4. Is it produced using green manufacturing processes without harmful chemical byproducts?
  5. Does it follow McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC)’s Cradle to Cradle principals?
  6. Does the finished product off-gas harmful chemicals having a negative effect on indoor air quality?
  7. Does the manufacturer have a company-wide sustainability policy?

Offerings from our regulars:

Panaz

ecoTWILL™ by Panaz, the industry first, contract quality, 100% recycled polyester basecloth for print. Made in England, this truly sustainable, low carbon footprint basecloth for upholstery allows architects and designers to specify a fire-retardant standard fabric, which is a durable and eco-friendly product for hospitality and workspace contract environments. Woven with yarns manufactured from recycled plastic, each metre of ecoTWILL™ repurposes dozens of 500ml plastic bottles into a desirable, long-lasting fabric (100,000+ martindale) which itself is recyclable at end-of-life.

Kvadrat

Danish firm Kvadrat – Six of the firm’s textiles are particularly green.

((lnteresting when you have a moment: https://kvadrat.dk/about/our-environment))

Hallingdal, 70 percent new wool and 30 percent viscose.     Molly is stamped with the EU  Flower designation, meaning manufacturing, chemical composition, and quality is checked by independent bodies in order to comply to strict ecological and performance criteria.

More interested in biodegradable? Flora, Kosmos, and Helix, are labelled “Good Green Buy” by the Bra Miljöval (or Falken), a Swedish eco label backed by the Swedish Society for Nature. This means contents can easily breakdown at the end of the product’s lifecycle.

Kvadrat continued: Across 465964 seating upholstery from textile manufacturer Maharam is made of 100 percent post-consumer recycled polyester. The firm has several textiles containing some or all recycled content, as well as a few designed to be easily biodegradable.

Chieftain

Chieftain Carousel, their 2nd fabric to launch into the woven market. Its composition is made up of 59% Recycled Cotton and 41% Polyester. It is suitable for all contact application with Crib 5 certification & 200,000 Martindale Rubs. Carousel is also has Aquaclean™ Technology, a cleaning facilitator meaning that most stains can be removed using water only. Aquaclean™ has also been treated with Safefront® Protective Shield and will not support the growth of bacteria.

All but 2 of Chieftain’s vinyl ranges carry the logo ‘Reduced Environmental Impact’ which means it can be recycled by the PVC being stripped away from the cotton backing cloth and reused. Typically, the PVC is reused in electrical wiring and Wellington Boots! Chieftain recycle on average 500kg every month their PVC with the help of P.P.H.U Kajmax in cooperation with EMABO (a member of Recovinyl) https://www.recovinyl.comƒabout-us

The backing cloth Chieftain use is also from recycled cotton. Going one step further, Chieftain’s Lionella range has 100% organic cotton backing.

Agua

Agua Fabrics have recently launch Tierra Eco which is a new and innovative 33% plant based eco-friendly faux leather ideal for interior uses.    Sadly their website doesn’t support any further information than this however, there is a small amount of information on their swatch card: This new technique makes the product strong and hardwearing yet ultimately biodegradable on disposal. There is no compromise in per− formance, and the collection has been rigorously tested and achieved an impressive 100k+ Martindale abrasion rating.

Agua are looking of ways to increase the proportion of plant-based products in our artificial leathers to reduce the use of PVC; this also helps with biodegradability at the end of the product life. An example of this new policy is our recently overhauled FurnisoG PU faux leather range which is now biodegradable.

ILIV

ILIV (smd textiles) don’t currently have any offerings in the way of recycled fabrics. Its something they are looking into. However, with that said, what they do is heavily reinvest into the local community and in return giving them very strong Corporate Social Responsibility message.

Camira

Camira are soon due to launch Oceanic, a fabric conceived and woven entirely from recycled plastic taken from the sea and rescued from the land. Oceanic is a fabric born of the SEAQUAL Initiative to achieve a waste free environment.

Here is a list of Camira’s other sustainable textiles and the yarnƒproduct they use: Flax—24ƒ7 Flax, Main Line Flax, Patina

Hemp— Hedben and Hemp

Nettle—Aztec, Nomad and Traveller

Wool—Aquarius, Blazer, Blazer Lite, Craggan, Indivduo, Landscape, Oxygen, Synergy & Synergy 170

In Summary

Now, more than ever before, there are sustainable choices for contract fabrics which meet the demanding requirements of the contract market while protecting our planet. Celebrate Earth Day every day!

Our Fabric Supply – Proud, But Why?

March 25, 2020 by Lee Ness 1 Comment

Chieftain Fabrics and Global Upholstery Solutions Ltd have a long-standing fabric supply relationship; one of which we’re extremely proud.

Chieftain supply many of the fabrics used by our group partner Stannah Stairlifts, the world leading stairlift manufacturer, and so we use hundred’s of metres of Chieftain fabrics every week. Most of this is from their extensive Just Colour range. Stannah, in partnership with Design Agency blackswan has also just launched a premium range of upholsteries which includes the Chieftain Ravel and Lionella ranges.

Through the ever-changing demands of the customer and the Industry, and necessity of our delicate planet, they maintain a high level of achievement when it comes to Sustainability, a subject close to our heart.

fabric supply

Any supplier of any type of fabric will know that it’s not easily achievable and months, even years, of trials, testing, and market research is involved.   But Chieftain Fabrics have achieved just this and continue to strive with further developments and improvements to their products: “It is not an easy task to produce a high quality, high performance vinyl fabric that has little impact on the environment.    Here, at Chieftain Fabrics, this is our goal.   Through making small frequent changes to our ingredients and production methods, we hope to eventually manufacture a coated fabric that is PVC free and yet fulfils all the requirements of a high-performance contract fabric”.

Chieftain Fabrics have implemented several changes – organic cotton backing cloth, switching to organic pigments from naturals sources such as plants, plant products or other carbon-based life forms, and use recycled polyester thread.   They use pallets from recycled wood, sourced from FSC approved mills and in addition reuse the pallets too.   All cardboard is recycled and sourced from FSC approved sources.  Even in the office, they stay as paperless as possible, separate waste and use energy efficient lighting.   I could go on, but you get the gist.   But if you’re interested in knowing more, take a moment to visit their website and go to the Blog tab…

So, I go back to my opening line and reiterate how proud we are to be one of Chieftain Fabrics customer’s and now you know why.   Their ethos is aligned with ours (take a look at our Sustainability Ethos here); we want to be a part of their fabric supply journey – discovering what is possible, bringing it to market for all to adorn.

****

Lindsay Watson-Jones

Materials Manager

BCFA Sustainability Forum

March 5, 2020 by Lee Ness Leave a Comment

Our General Manager of Global Upholstery Solutions, Lee Ness, was one of the guest speakers at the inaugural BCFA Sustainability Forum to share our Sustainability journey.

Although Sustainability is a very serious subject, we think the pursuit of Sustainable objectives should be enjoyable, engaging and fun – so we had a recycled, remanufactured and repurposed jacket made just for this event. At Global, we love improving our sustainability performance and we hope we shared that with the attendees.

When Christians have a difficult choice to make, some of them will often ask themselves, What Would Jesus Do?

There is even a hashtag, #WWJD!

For sustainability though, there is only one question. What would Greta Thunberg do?

Greta Thunberg 02.jpg: Anders HellbergDerivative work: Dikson / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Great Thunberg is a true hero of our age. For us, an imaginary Greta Thunberg sits in judgement on any of our initiatives and challenges us to consider – are we doing enough? Of course the answer is invariably ‘no’ so Ms Thunberg pushes us to do more. In our heads anyway.

We start where everyone probably started – waste. We try to reduce waste at source by using CAD to maximise fabric and wood layouts for our CNC Wood and Fabric Cutting machines.

With the waste we do generate, obviously, everything that can be recycled is recycled, and everything else is waste-to-energy.

sustainability forum

When we tested this against imaginary Greta we got nothing back. Nothing, because this isn’t even hitting the baseline. Everyone does this. Home and business. It’s the equivalent of phoning it in. It has to be done, but it is a bare minimum.

Next, is energy use. Can we improve our energy use? Of course the answer is yes. All the factory lighting is replaced with intelligent LEDs that not only have sensors for movement, time programs and low power settings, they also sense the amount of light coming into the factory through the skylights and adjust their levels accordingly. 

Our vehicles are tracked to ensure they are driven safely and efficiently and scores are monitored for harsh cornering, braking, acceleration, idling and driver reports are sent out. Anyone scoring over 5 points per hour is put on the naughty step.

So, back to Greta. How are we getting on? Hmmm mediocre it seems. We are only doing what everyone does domestically anyway. Again, still bare minimum so Greta is still not impressed.

Okay, what about that energy though? I saw a post from a competitor that 10% of all their energy came from solar panels they had purchased. Initially I thought this sound great! 10%. But then my sneaky engineer brain kicked in and asked ‘What about the other 90%?’ Good question, pesky brain. They could be burning dolphins or white rhino horn for the other 90% as far as we know.

Imaginary Greta is less than happy. What can we do? If only we could supply 100% of our gas and electricity from sustainable sources. Imagine that! But we’d need a massive solar farm and ….Oh hang on. Maybe someone has already thought of this. Turns out they have. We’re in the process of switching to the SSE Green energy tariffs. 100% of the electricity comes from sustainable sources such as solar, hydro and wind, plus 100% of gas comes from agricultural waste gas collection. 100%. That’s a definite tick for Greta, surely?

The next blindly obvious step, and I know everyone reading is already ahead of me, is to eliminate single use plastics. Plastic cups for drinking water was a quick and easy change and we eliminated them practically overnight, supplying everyone with aluminium water bottles.

But we did a study on single use plastic bags, specified by our customers. We were using over 110,000 single use bags per year. Starting with our biggest customer, we have managed to virtually eliminate single use bags either because they were unnecessary or by replacing with recycled paper bags.

Our aim is to keep giving our customers options, obviously we can’t force them, and hoping we can slowly remove everything. We are trialling alternatives to bubble wrap of course and where possible we are looking at returnable packaging.

How about incoming supply? We have the weird paradox where we are buying eco fabrics in single use plastic wraps, which create a lot of waste!

Obviously, we recycle that waste, but wouldn’t it be amazing if there was something we could use to wrap the fabric in, something durable, hard wearing and reusable. Then if we could find someone with a process that could make it into a bag, that would be……..oh wait.

How’s that Greta? Wow, real progress. That’s almost a smile.

Next step for us is what we’re making. Again, our customers dictate what we make and what with, but we can use our expertise, purchasing power and supplier network to give options. Foam is obviously a environmental ‘problem’. A product of the petrochemical industry, that needs lots of chemicals to achieve fire retardancy and then an end of life nightmare.

We’ve been working hard on sourcing an alternative for over a year and can happily say we are now working with Enkev to give us a whole range of sustainable alternatives, our favourite being Cocolok – a product made from Coir, the waste product from Coconut farming which is fully biodegradable and can even be put onto your compost heap at the end of life.

We have also worked with our supply partners Panaz on an eco fabric. We buy hundreds of metres of fabric a week from Panaz so they were happy to work with us to find a perfect eco fabric. The process took around 12 months to complete until we had a product everyone was happy with and EcoTwill was born. EcoTwill is made from recycling plastic bottles so removes waste from the system.

Our reason for requesting EcoTwill was for a project that didn’t come off, but our design agency blackswan has since developed a whole range of fabric designs inspired by the waste plastic that it is made from (X). Panaz will be launching the Bisophaira range around mid year and the one below is called Lonii and is inspired by Sea Turtles. There are 7 designs in the range.

One of our biggest customers has just (last week) launched a new product range of Eco products made by Global Upholstery Solutions using the Panaz EcoTwill and the Cocolok cushioning, the first in their industry and all developed by blackswan and Global Upholstery Solutions.

Greta is starting to look happier, but we’re still not there yet.

Our next step is more strategic. Global Upholstery Solutions will create a full range of Eco Friendly alternatives so that in future, on every quote, the clients will be given an alternative option using sustainable materials. We will also start to brief our customer base on the options that are available to them. We will be tying in with BCFA to make this a CPD module.

But Remanufacturing, Circular Economy Products, Cradle to Cradle methods are the holy grail and our design agency blackswan is releasing a series of concepts over the course of this year, starting next week, to demonstrate the opportunities to be had if we tackle Sustainability at the design stage.

blackswan

Finally, we are about to launch Reupholstery Limited, a company that is specifically set up to reupholster or remanufacture existing products for commercial customers – hospitality, office, theatres, universities etc. We know we aren’t the first or even the only company that is doing this, but we think it is an opportunity to promote the option specifically, rather than as an alternative to an existing solution.

We’re very excited, it seems like imaginary Greta is reasonably happy, but we know this is only the start of our sustainability journey. 

If you would like to discuss any of the above, are interested in the Sustainability Options CPD or the Reupholstery Limited initiative, please contact us.

Recycling with Art at Architect at Work

February 6, 2020 by Lee Ness Leave a Comment

At first glance this exhibition in trendy Shoreditch only seemed home to high-end suppliers promoting their premium products, however, surprisingly there was a multi-coloured gem amongst the sea of white marble tiles – we weren’t expecting recycling to inspire us as much as it did, especially here!

‘A large part of the world’s population is wearing flip flops. This footwear is cheap to buy, but not durable to use. Together with an undeveloped waste disposal system, this causes flip flops in developing countries to end up in nature and eventually in the oceans. Passionate about the oceans and aware of the importance of ecosystems, the Kenyan Ocean Sole tackles this problem. The washed-up flip flops are collected, cleaned and glued. The creative team of craftsmen then process the flip flops into colourful animals. Three local and global problems are tackled: prevention and control of pollution of land and sea by the plastics, job creation and limited logging for wood art works’ – www.architect-at-work.co.uk

The environment has become a significant issue in modern day manufacturing, and one that’s extremely important to us individually and as a company, which is why our Sustainability Ethos is so important to us.. Although we’re not collecting flip flops from Bournemouth beach and creating multi-coloured furniture, we are passionate about doing our bit and share Ocean Sole’s environmental concerns. In most industries plastic is a frequently used material, but in particular manufacturing. We aim to change this in our factories and lead by example. For us, one of the main culprits for single-use plastic were the bags used to protect our fabrics whilst in transit. This would range from delivery, returns or simply transferring material from one site to the other.

We decided to take action and create our own internal and external bags from left over fabrics. Here we tackle two issues, firstly, eliminating the plastic packaging for our fabric rolls and secondly, reducing our waste by recycling left over fabrics. Like Ocean Sole we are constantly searching for innovative ways to reuse materials in order to create something new, something sustainable and something to support the planet. 

We are only one company, but one that has joined the fight against plastic, and are standing shoulder to shoulder alongside Ocean Sole.

Written by Georgia Winhall – Designer

https://www.architect-at-work.co.uk/

https://www.oceansole.co.uk/

Sustainability in Business is More Than Trees, Animals and Waste

February 6, 2020 by Lee Ness Leave a Comment

Many companies claim to be Sustainable or have an Environmental policy, but sustainability in business often falls short of the things that make less headlines and fall closer to home. Our sustainability ethos includes care for our employees too.

The common themes for being sustainable involve reduction in single use plastics, using sustainable materials and by the more forward looking companies, by achieving circular product design.

However, the Cradle to Cradle certification as an example, has one important factor that business must take note of in their products (FSC certification also includes a similar clause). The fifth category in the C2C certification is Social Fairness – defined as

The aim of this category is to design business operations that honor all people and natural systems affected by the manufacture of a product.

“All People” includes our own team. At Global Upholstery Solutions, not only does this mean we have CSR and Modern Slavery policies, but we take the Mental Health of our employees very seriously.

Four of our Leadership Team this week joined the others in our business who had completed the MHFA England one day course to become MHFA Champions which gives them an understanding of common mental health issues and the skills to signpost people to support.

Of our overall team of 70 staff, we now have the following Mental Health First Aid Champions:

Lia Branco – Head of Design

Martin Brown – Upholstery Development

Richard Holt – Manufacturing Group Leader

Paul Holloway – Despatch Team Leader

Lee Ness – General Manager

Andy Vale – Manufacturing Manager

Lindsay Watson-Jones – Materials Manager

Phil Wheeler – Operations Manager

Andrea Westley – Manufacturing Group Leader

We have others scheduled to complete the course and feedback from all has been excellent. All feel they now understand mental health issues better, can recognise potential mental health issues earlier and have the tools they need to help and support our team members that might have mental health issues. Our next step is for a proportion of the team that has completed the Champion course to now complete the full First Aid course.

At Global Upholstery Solutions, Sustainability in Business means that the health, physical and mental, of our team is just as important to us as our social responsibility to the rest of the planet. We would recommend the MHFA training to all businesses.

You can arrange Mental Health First Aid for your representatives at Mental Health First Aid England here.

 

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