Sustainable textiles on display
Designer Veronica Olariu showed a chair made from hemp fabric and a pineapple‑leaf fiber composite for the 'No Space for Waste' exhibition, using balance and tension to underline material experimentation. Designboom highlights the piece as a practical example of sustainability entering object design rather than staying at the conceptual level. (designboom.com)
A chair usually stays upright by being heavy. Veronica Olariu’s new Hemp Chair does the opposite: it stays stable through rope tension and counterbalance, like a camping tent that stands because its lines are pulled tight. (designboom.com) The piece uses two plant-based parts that do different jobs. Hemp fabric forms layered shells for the seat, while a pineapple-leaf felt core sits inside those shells to add structure without adding much weight. (designboom.com) Those pineapple leaves are not grown for furniture. They come from Thailand’s agricultural industry as a by-product, which means Olariu and material engineer Dr. Jariyavadee Sirichantra are turning leftover crop material into a load-bearing component. (designboom.com) Pineapple-leaf fiber has been getting attention in materials research for one simple reason: it is light, cellulose-rich, and strong enough to reinforce composite materials. A 2024 review describes it as cost-effective and suitable for polymer composites across multiple industrial uses. (mdpi.com) Olariu’s chair is not just swapping in greener ingredients and keeping the same old shape. The whole structure is built around visible tension, with a hemp rope stretched between slender wooden supports so the balance system stays out in the open instead of being hidden inside a bulky frame. (designboom.com) That visible structure changes how the chair is used. Designboom reports that the prototype supports both an upright position and a reclined position, with curved shells that guide the body rather than letting it sink into a soft lounge shape. (designboom.com) The manufacturing method matters too. The shells are made with resin transfer molding, a closed-mold process that pushes resin through the fiber layers, which helps control saturation and can cut waste and emissions during fabrication. (designboom.com) The current prototype still uses epoxy resin, so this is not a fully plant-based object yet. Olariu says the next step is moving to fully bio-based resin systems, which would bring the chemistry closer to the renewable logic of the fibers. (designboom.com) The chair is set to appear during Milan Design Week 2026 in the “No Space for Waste” exhibition at the Isola Design Festival, which runs from April 20 to April 26 in Milan. Isola’s 2026 program describes that exhibition as a showcase for everyday objects made from discarded or low-impact materials rather than one-off green concepts. (designboom.com) (isola.design) That is what makes this chair easy to remember. It treats sustainability less like a label on the side of an object and more like a structural rule, where hemp, pineapple waste, wood, and rope each do a specific job the way steel tubes and foam usually would. (designboom.com)
