Inhabitat

INHABITABLE CARDBOARD ROOMS

Cardboard, you abundantly mundane material, what would we do without you? Or rather, what else can we do with you? We’ve already featured some interesting uses of cardboard including furniture, as a structural component, and even a coffin. So we’d like to add one more to the “things to do with cardboard” file, that of a… room?

Finnish designers Esa Ruskeepää, Martti Kalliala and Martin Lukasczyk, took 720 sheets of 7mm corrugated cardboard, cut each one of them as per the detailed plans, and without any fixings or glue, stacked them together to create a really cool looking sound room for listening to music. The cardboard provides all the insulation required for this room. The design was originally done for a design contest by the University of Art and Design Helsinki and has won three other awards including one from Architectural Review.

+ Esa Ruskeepaa
+ Martin Lukasczyk
+ Martti Kalliala

Via Core77 Via The Cool Hunter

13 Responses to “INHABITABLE CARDBOARD ROOMS”

brittany Says:

April 18th, 2007 at 10:54 am

this is amazing..how did u do this

metis Says:

April 18th, 2007 at 12:06 pm

so, it looks cool, and i’ll wager is an absurdly acoustically dead space, but how much does it weigh, can it be leaned on, and that’s a lot of tree bits to recycle when you spill a soda on it, or try to mop the floor.

Darren Says:

April 18th, 2007 at 2:53 pm

Probably manufactured with a large format laser cutter with CAD templates. Essentially you would create a sculptural volume and then segment it and direct that information into the machine to cut it. The material is probably coated so that it resists moisture and may even be fire-rated. Definitely solid and can be leaned on. Really lovely.

Shutter4U Says:

April 18th, 2007 at 6:50 pm

Hope they don’t leave that light on too long! or fall asleep with a cigarette burning, or live in a hot, dry climate, etc. That place is a fire hazard!!

David in Bali Says:

April 19th, 2007 at 5:05 am

Now this is thinking outside the ??? hmm, make that inside ??? hmm, ok, this is the box! Yes it has it short comings but it’s creative and inspiring – good for temp rooms in cavernous speace.

Richie Says:

April 19th, 2007 at 10:57 am

What kind of toxic chemicals would have to be used to ‘fireproof’ this structure and would they off-gas so as to be inhaled and rub off on clothing and skin ? What about corrugated plastic cardboard instead ?

royalestel Says:

April 19th, 2007 at 11:21 am

Yeah it’s nifty looking, but I was also wondering about practicality.

HOWEVER, for a sound-absorbing room, this must be awesomely cheap!! Which makes it a candidate to replace other expensive options!

PaulS. Says:

April 20th, 2007 at 1:01 am

Richie asked about fire retardant chemicals that might be used on this project. Here’s a story from the Seattle Times about a possible ban on fire retardant chemicals called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE’s) and decabromo diphenyl ether.

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=pbde21m&date=20060121&query=flame+retardant

In the text of the story they state: “While the risk to humans is not yet fully clear, the chemicals can alter brain development and cause reproductive problems in laboratory animals. (Washington) State officials want to halt the use of PBDEs now as a precaution.”

norm Says:

April 20th, 2007 at 6:07 am

it looks like similar idea from ‘glass house competition’ winning entry…around 1993 if i am not mistaken..same idea except it uses glass and laid vertically!!

arthur Says:

April 26th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

i’m not convinced that this is good for anything. it’s certainly cool; but, for me, it’s an enormous waste of material. it’s a one -liner that is still ‘inside the box’. for a rectangular (and more spatially potent) version, visit Ini Ani, by LTL. It is located in New York, in the Lower East Side.

peter Says:

May 8th, 2007 at 4:45 am

quite the remarkable thing might seem novel but with a little bit of enginuity more eco friendly than plastic

deborah Says:

June 9th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

i run a manufacturing plant in oklahoma and have a great deal of cardboard. I do try to reccyle everything but some months the cardboard boxes that accummulate is amazing. Any ideas on something that I could do-make-create-use the large amount of cardboard that I collect. Hope you can give an idea or direct me on how to use this. Our company is green! Deborah Lewis