Designers and makers have become accustomed to working at a fast pace to respond to the demands of the market. External Review, Tom Fereday’s solo exhibition for Sydney Design Week 2022 presented a rare opportunity to pause and reflect on all the elements that contribute to the realization of a furniture collection. By opening up his process to external review, Fereday sought to challenge our preconceptions of the meaning of good design for all of those involved in the process of creation.
External Review, a collaboration between the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), award winning designer Tom Fereday, furniture manufacturers Evostyle and upholstery specialists, Swiss Design, was unveiled at this year’s Sydney Design Week 2022. On display at the Australian Design Centre, the collaboration follows and celebrates Fereday’s latest work, the Cove lounge, including the entire design process from the source of the raw material through to manufacture and final presentation with the purpose of shared learning.
“It is important for me as a designer to stop and reflect on some of the processes that have become somewhat intuitive in my work. We have become accustomed to working at a fast pace to respond to the demands of the market. Opening my work up to external review is an opportunity to consider what I know, what I don’t know and what I need to learn to continue to build an environmentally considerate design studio,” said Tom Fereday.
According to Fereday, the design process starts from a specific natural material or manufacturing process combined with a desire for a unique approach to a product. In the instance of the Cove Lounge, Fereday wanted to examine the possibility of an external framed lounge made entirely from solid timber, in this case American red oak, with the ability to flat pack. Fereday also wanted to explore how exposing the structure of the lounge through an entirely solid timber frame might allow for higher quality materials to be utilized without unnecessary hidden lower quality, and often difficult to repair or maintain, materials and assemblies.
The Cove lounge has been created from American red oak, the most abundant species in the American hardwood forest resource. Whilst most of Fereday’s designs are made in American hardwood species, this was his first experience designing with red oak. His aim was to create a lounge that exposed the beauty of this natural material. The piece was made by Evostyle, a family- owned business who manufacture for a number of Australia’s most well-known designers, and who play a valuable role in working with designers in ensuring concepts are marketable when made.
Louise Ommundson, Evostyle’s Director, said: “With Tom, we looked at ways of tweaking the design to save on material waste, as well as discussing the best method of construction, timber species and suitable coating choices. This helps make the product as strong, long lasting and price competitive as possible, and is the true value manufacturers bring to the table. Often small concessions on the design can have a big impact on the viability of the product. Shaving off a few millimetres from the timber thickness for example can sometimes have a huge impact if it means that stock sizes can be reduced.”
According to Fereday, when working in solid timber there are many considerations that must be resolved related to material suitability, particularly strength and durability. As such, the designer worked closely in collaboration with Evostyle to ensure the best possible outcome, with one of the most unique elements being the development of a flat packing frame design, which means the piece is easier and cost effective to transport. The maker and designer also collaborated closely on the types of joints and methods of construction, which ultimately benefited the final design and outcome.
A key component of the collaboration was to interrogate the true environmental impact of Australian design. This was achieved by conducting a full life cycle assessment (LCA) of the Cove lounge. LCA involves the collection and evaluation of quantitative data on all the inputs and outputs of material, energy and waste flows associated with a product over its entire life cycle so that the environmental impacts can be determined. The assessment revealed that the lifetime carbon footprint of the Cove lounge is just 18.7kg CO2 equivalent, which is about the same as the carbon emitted in a single journey from Sydney CBD to Bowral in the average Australian car (125km).
“We wanted to stop and pause to reflect upon how and why we develop furniture and in doing so share our learnings with the skilled makers we work with and the wider design community in Australia. We have developed a number of furniture collections over years however we have never previously performed a formal life cycle assessment of our work to understand the true environmental impact of our work. It felt that this could be an interesting process to share externally in the hope of encouraging others to question what it means to design responsibly,” added Fereday.
Taking into account a very long and tortuous transport route including 1,100 km by truck from lumber processing location to the East Coast of the US, and shipment via Suez and Singapore to Sydney, the American red oak used to create Cove arrived on Australian shores carbon negative. On completion of the finished piece, total emissions resulting from the creation of Cove are 135.7kg CO2 equivalent. This includes all processes from material extraction, through transport of materials, manufacturing at Evostyle, and delivery of finished product to the exhibition.
“Often there is concern about using imported timbers given misconceptions about the impact of transport. In reality, transporting timber around the world has a negligible environmental impact. Wood is an effective carbon store, and such is the efficiency of the U.S. hardwood processing industry, and the fact that the lumber is shipped to Australia by sea, we can prove that the embodied carbon is significantly greater than that emitted during extraction, processing and transport,” added Roderick Wiles, AHEC Regional Director.
At Sydney Design Week, visitors were invited to stop and reflect on all the elements that contribute to the creation of a furniture piece from American red oak. They had the opportunity to learn about and challenge their preconceptions of good practice and the importance of being consumers of considered design. It also provided a chance for the wider community to ask, how can we foster a sense of thoughtful, intentional and environmentally responsible design whilst championing Australian craftsmanship?
“We are looking to provoke and inform conversation between designers, makers and the design industry alike. To ask how we can improve the development of furniture and how we can support local manufacture in Australia today in an environmentally sensitive way and the role of material selection within that. We have naively posed this question through the development of a new furniture piece – The Cove Lounge,” added Fereday.
Another important determinant of carbon footprint for wood products is the sustainability of harvesting. Crediting carbon storage in wood is only legitimate if it is known to derive from a sustainable forest resource. This is true of red oak – there are 2.6 billion cubic meters of red oak standing U.S. forests and harvest levels of around 32 million cubic meters per year are well below growth (net of natural mortality) of around 60 million cubic meters per year. It takes just a small fraction of a second (0.14 seconds) for the red oak used for the design to be replaced by regrowth in the U.S. hardwood forest.
“Australia is home to some of the world’s most accomplished designers and manufacturers. American hardwoods continue to be very popular with those for whom solid and proven environmental credentials matter. We are very fortunate to work with Tom on this project who is genuinely curious about how to continue to develop his craft despite already having achieved an incredible level of recognition and success. The Australian Design Centre have been a truly supportive partner in bringing this collaboration to life for Sydney Design Week and we are also lucky to continue to be able to work with Evostyle with whom we have forged a close and fruitful relationship over a number of years,” commented Wiles. “I hope with the Cove Lounge we have achieved a piece of furniture which is both aesthetically and functionally enduring. Perhaps the most important factor when considering environmental impacts of furniture today is longevity. This has been a real process of discovery for our studio – through the life cycle assessment we have come to appreciate the impact of the different process necessary for realization of a design and our role within that,” concluded Fereday.