#Modular furniture system reimagines cardboard as a high-quality construction material

Furniture has to be functional first and aesthetic second, otherwise, all you get is a large piece of decoration taking up space. Today, those requirements often mean using materials like metal, wood, or even plastic, sometimes in a combination of those. While these are the most common materials used for furniture, they are hardly the only ones available, nor are they the most sustainable options as well.

With so much waste being thrown out, it might sometimes be more environment-friendly to use discarded or recycled materials as the foundations for construction and production. Keeping your mind open to the possibilities can sometimes yield very surprising results, such as this modular furniture system that utilizes something you’d never expect to be used on something that’s meant to be sturdy and long-lasting: cardboard.

Designer: Raphael Klug

Next to plastic, cardboard is probably one of the most used materials for packaging, in addition to tissue roll cores. Because of their biodegradable nature, however, people tend to just discard them without a second thought, not realizing how long it would take for them to actually decompose, lying in wait in landfills and waters in the meantime. That said, there’s not much you can do with used cardboard because it tends to be less reliable, at least without some creative thinking.

HIDDEN:PAPERS is a design for modular furniture that revolves around giving cardboard an upgrade. It shatters preconceived notions about the material’s suitability for things that need stability by becoming the foundation of different kinds of furniture. Practically speaking, thick cardboard tubes form the frames of these pieces of furniture, and each cylinder can be used for a different design.

Of course, the naked cardboard material won’t be aesthetic on its own, unless you’re actually aiming for that kind of earthy recycled motif. The cardboard tubes are instead wrapped in a sheet of linoleum to give it texture and style, using a stitched paper cord instead of adhesives to make it possible to replace the linoleum without damaging the underlying cardboard.

The linoleum-wrapped cardboard tubes connect to each other using nodes made from recycled plastic and can be assembled using a common 5mm hex key. Depending on the combination, they can form a shelf, a side table, or even a chair, with metal or wooden sheets serving as the flat surfaces. This design gives HIDEN:PAPERS a rather distinctive appearance that in no way reveals its humble cardboard roots, proving that the material indeed has the potential to become a reliable component of premium products.