Where Architecture and Furniture Design Overlap in The Terms of Circularity: A Cross-Disciplinary Field

Abstract

The paper explores how circular economy (CE), and its practices relates furniture design and architecture in the case of the Regenerative Cabin (fig.2), The Regenerative Cabin Table (fig. 4) and The Lyngby Table (fig. 6). The paper examines the interdisciplinary field of design and architecture and how thinking and concepts of CE establish relationships across disciplines. The study is a qualitative empirical case-study based on observations, qualitative interviews with the architects involved and analysis of documents, files, and digital presentations from the design processes. The theoretical perspective is theory on circular economy (Preston, 2012, Ellen-MacArthur Foundation 2015) and Actor-network Theory (ANT) (Latour 2005, Yaneva 2009). The understanding that materials and ideas such as circular economy are actors with agency is crucial to the research and ANT-inspired mappings of dynamic actors. The cabin acts as an intersection point of architecture and different avenues of furniture design. Preston ́s definition of CE helps us find the overlap that happens between architecture and furniture design, when architectural waste of certain dimensions fails to find relevance within the architectural field, that same waste can find purpose in furniture design. Findings from the study indicate that circular economy and a circular mindset might suggest new possibilities that require close collaboration between actors from a cross- disciplinary field. The case also indicates that practices like this need a well-designed network to achieve the desired results.