Reuse of materials for furniture designing: An innovative approach

9^th World Convention on Waste Recycling and Reuse

March 11-12, 2019 Singapore

Jeyagowri Rajagopal and Pradeepa P

Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science, India

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Adv Recycling Waste Manag

Abstract :

A well-organized home is determined by the quality of furniture used in the home. A house is never a home without those special touches that reflect the personalities and lifestyles of those who live there, our own imagination and ideas make our dream home look beautiful and pleasant. A house may have number of rooms; each room will be only an empty space until it is furnished properly. Furniture can not only make a building look comfortable and luxurious but also useful and complete. It is therefore important to take time to plan furniture which suits the needs in accordance to oneâ??s lifestyle. Furniture is an important part of management. It is mostly used for indoor activity. Designing furniture from waste materials is not an unfamiliar concept. Furniture is often considered as incidentals, almost added as an afterthought and its importance in home decor mostly overlooked. Furniture made out of unused materials will be functional, cost saving, can save our nature without cutting of trees. A survey was done on 25 households and 25 commercial outlets in Coimbatore, Kodaikanal, Chennai in Tamil Nadu and Palakkad in Kerala of South India were selected by purposive sampling to assess the knowledge of reuse of materials for furniture designing, type of furniture designed, use, efforts taken to care and maintain the designed furniture by adopting personal interview cum observation method for the households and commercial outlets. A case study was then conducted to analyze in depth, the reuse of materials for furniture designing in one household and one commercial out let to examine the benefits and problems encountered by the users of their choice of furniture designing. Based on the interaction with the homemaker and the out let owner during the case study, it was found that they were interested in this furniture (made out of reuse materials). They expressed all furniture designed were comfortable, gave aesthetic look to their houses. The advantages of having furniture made out of reuse materials in commercial outlets expressed by the outlet owners were using waste materials and to attract customers (each 92%), clutter clearance, cost wise cheap and customers appreciation (each 88%), aesthetic and unique look (82 per cent), easy to maintain (76%), implement their own designs (68%). They mentioned only two disadvantages such as the furniture will not have finished look (80%) like other new furniture and not readily available in the shops (76%) like purchasing any other product.

Biography :

E-mail: jeyagowrirajagopal@gmail.com