Northwards Design Studio

Bean Bag Bench

2009

DIY Design for Surplus & Creativity Exhibition 2009

Coffee and DIY are the two most poignant and memorable aspects of living in Wellington, New Zealand, as an immigrant from the UK.

The Bean Bag Bench is an attempt to encapsulate these feelings in a piece of furniture. Inspired by sacks of coffee beans at a local cafe, a ubiquitous site in the nation’s capitol, this piece of furniture sits somewhere between a bar stool and a chair, designed as a perch for short periods of time.

Constructed from a recycled jute coffee sack, the beautiful graphic nature of this eco-packaging gives a narrative to its journey and point of interest for the soft seat. The seat is filled with recycled Polystyrene beads, sourced from a local recycling plant. Because of Polystyrene’s lightness and toxicity, it is more desirable to keep this material out of landfill. The soft seat sits on a frame adapted from a standard pine saw horse. The coffee sack is pinched in, and stitched by hand to give a more pronounced form.

The design is finished with ‘coffee spill’ urethane feet. These are hand painted and give a non-slip foot to prevent the bench sliding on hard surfaces, and a conceptual link to the coffee sack.

The Bean Bag Bench is an ethical conversation piece, functional ‘ready-made’, and an expression of the idiosyncrasies of Aotearoa's capitol from an outsider’s perspective.