Corrugated Furniture: A sustainable approach towards Interior Design

In recent times, Interior design practices have seen a dramatic shift with design strategies, which is focusing on providing healthy and sustainable indoor environments for the occupants. Interior designers feel compelled and can easily make a positive difference to the environmental problems extenuating it through their design choices to pursue sustainable design solutionsfor the given space. To achieve the same it’s apparent that Interior designers need to reduce the consumption of materials which creates negative impacts on environment, and choose them wisely to mitigate the same.Furthermore, to inculcate sustainability in interiors the designers should always put their practice in accordance to the 4R’s that is by giving first priority to Reduce, second Re-use, third Recycle and ensure that any new materials used are Renewable. Sustainable interiors is all about creating the indoor spaces more eco-friendly, along with acquaintance of positive cliental approach through practicing and implementing innovation in design. Amidst the array of sustainable base materials like wood, bamboo, particle boards, straw boards, and other customary materials like metal and plastic which are commonly used in making furniture units of either commercial or residential establishments; have now begun to be replaced by the furnitures made by corrugated sheets so as to cater the need of sustainability in interiors along with innovation in the furniture design. Corrugated sheet being a packaging material also proves to be a versatile material for making the furniture units. It is durable, light in weight, recyclable and eco-friendly base material offering a good alternative solution to wooden, metal and plastic furniture. It basically works on the joinery details which evades the use of screwing and nailing process for the furnitures to be made. In view of the above an experimental study focusingon assessing the knowledge regarding the corrugated furniture was undertaken. The sample of the study comprised of fifty selected Interior design studentsfrom The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. The purposive sampling technique was used for the study. Additionally, the study also aimed to create awareness regarding the corrugated furniture through conducting the training programme for the respondents and to accustom them for designing the corrugated furniture through learning various joineries deployed by making the prototyped furniture itself in actual scale. The findings revealed that the majority of the respondents possessed poor knowledge with regards to the information, making and usability of corrugated furniture. The training programme conducted played a vital role in increasing their understanding about the corrugated furniture and its curation process which also helped in inculcating the practiceof using the sustainable material in furniture design. This in the long run would surely be beneficial to design fraternity as well as the society to become more environmentally sensitive and sparkle the context and need for sustainable Interior design, leading towards better health and well-being of the global ecosystem.