Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Jeffrey Forrest, the founder of STACKLAB, and Maison Gerard launch a new innovative system for designing custom furniture, Stackabl that turns waste material into sustainable furniture without creating more waste that’s likely to end up in landfills.
Stackabl recently won a 2022 Green Good Design Award from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Stacklab works closely with regional manufacturers, algorithms, and robotics to identify remnant inventory.
Leftover supplies are leveraged to empower local economies and lower the carbon footprint. The next step is a simple configurator that brings the designer into the fold.
The easy-to-use interface gives them the ability to turn these quality offcuts into custom furniture with specific colors, patterns, dimensions, and densities of their choosing.
This innovative system gives designers the ability to create 2D and 3D real-time visualizations providing instant pricing while creating a transparent process that opens the doors to imagination and possibility.
Stackabl is a unique tech solution that is trying to help solve the sustainability problem within the furniture industry, which produces nine million tons of refuse every year.
The aim of Stacklab was to create an environmentally friendly platform that changes the way interior designers and consumers think about collectible and custom design.
Forrest explains that “this process is an experiment in designing in reverse. We start with the bigger issues and material constraints and reverse engineer until we arrive back at the product. This model allows us to re-shore jobs and supports local economies in a scalable way. The possibilities for what can be designed are endless.”
It is a proprietary, patent-pending digital configurator platform that allows designers and consumers alike to choose from a live inventory of leftover material from regional manufacturers to create unique pieces in real-time, with cost and lead time calculations built in.
Stackabl allows designers to use materials that will be configured into high-end chairs, daybeds, benches, and settees.
“This innovative project,” says Maison Gerard’s owner Benoist F. Drut, “has the potential to redefine our relationship with the materials we choose to make furniture with, prioritizes protecting the Earth, and has the goal of bringing a broader audience into the world of collecting.”
Stacklab and Maison Gerard have launched Stackabl with a collection of playful and colorful works configured by nine distinguished North American designers (Alexandra Champalimaud, Laura Kirar, Jamie Drake and Caleb Anderson, Elena Frampton, William Georgis and Ilya Mirgorodsky, and Benoist F. Drut)
The collaboration has resulted in a striking array of characterful works – from chairs to extravagant “chaise-longues” – that belong to both past and future.
Stackabl’s body of work demonstrates the endless possibilities at the intersection of design, technology, and circular manufacturing, where the imagination takes hold.
Project: Stackabl
Designers: Jeffrey Forrest, STACKLAB, and Maison Gerard Ltd
Manufacturer: STACKLAB and Maison Gerard Ltd
