MNN - Mother Nature Network

I dedicate a fair amount of time giving props to home furnishings made from recycled/recyclable and sustainably sourced materials since, after all, we need somewhere to stash our stuff, take a seat, and sleep at night, right? Right. But for those of you looking to take the “less is more” route to the extreme and completely avoid home furnishings altogether, get a load of the OOoo Chair.

 

Well, okay, this design concept is a chair in name only. As envisioned by Martina Decker and Peter Yeadon of New York’s Decker Yeadon, creating an OOoo Chair requires the “owner” to drill two circular, leg-sized holes in a floor and then line ‘em with recyclable plastic disks. Ready to sit? Remove the disks and stick your legs in the holes. Say what?

 

Drilling “leg holes” in your floor as a zero-material seating alternative may seem a touch crazed but from taking a look at renderings of an OOoo Chair in action and reading more about the deep green motivation behind the design, it begins to make sense. Kind of. According to Decker Yeadon, 64 billion BTUs are required to manufacture home furnishings on an annual basis, the same amount of power consumed by New York City over six weeks.

 Explain the designers:

 

Head on over to Decker Yeadon to read more about the staggering amount of energy and waste tied in with the home furnishing biz, sustainable and not, and how the OOoo Chair cleverly bypasses this. My big question? Where in the world do your legs go once you've taken a seat? I have a strong, somewhat disturbing mental image of a family sitting around the living room watching TV while their legs and feet dangle from the basement ceiling.