Furniture by Ineke Hans and Ton Haas with circular potential

September 21, 2021, 16:01

by ROBERT MUIS

Sander van Doorn was looking for an approach to minimize the use of new raw materials and maximize reuse in the production of office furniture. His recently introduced brand Circuform starts with two chairs by designers Ton Haas and Ineke Hans.

With Circuform, industrially designed furniture should be given a circular life.An initial introduction involves an award-winning chair design by Ineke Hans from2011, which is being reintroduced by this brand in a modified version. The result is REX.

Deposit Chair
The injection molds for Hans' design are remade for recycled material, the company explains. REX is made from recycled PA6, which comes from office chair parts, fishing nets and carpet,as well as industrial waste. The chair itself can be recycled again at the end of its useful life.

However, why recycle something if it is not yet needed. The REX, if the user wishes to discard it for any reason, can be returned to localCircuform return points for a deposit of €20. There are now ten of these, spread throughout the Netherlands. This makes the REX the first deposit chair, according toCircuform.

The returned deposit chairs are checked, cleaned, repaired if necessary and sold again. Again, the deposit scheme applies. Those that cannot be repaired are shredded into raw material for new production.

Post-consumer plastic
A second chair introduced by Circuform is the Kwart, a design by Ton Haas. The chair is made entirely from post-consumer plastic waste. The design of the furniture follows a search for the balance between efficient use of materials, comfort, technical feasibility and price,whereby the result also radiates a visual identity.

Haas models his chairs digitally, he explains. This allows him to calculate and test the strength, and find the technically optimal form within the design concept.

"I often try to design in such a way that recycled plastics can be used without leading to decreases in strength and elasticity," says Haas. "The Quarter has an optimal balance between amount of material and stiffness."

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