We are all used to the usual images of furniture made from tyres, usually in some backstreet in a “developing” nation. But, it need not always be the gaudily painted tyres wrapped in sisal. New York City-based designer company Slash Objects, has taken a different tack on using recycled rubber materials, blending them with granite and brass to create some stunning pieces that could grace any designer home.
Graduate Turns Recycled Rubber into Luxury Furniture
Slash Objects pairs rubber with marble, brass, and concrete to create side tables, day beds, and more with robust textures and sleek architectural lines. The company’s founder is designer Arielle Assouline-Lichten, who holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University and has worked at iconic architectural firms like Big, Kengo Kuma & Associates, and Snøhetta. She recently received the 2019 American Design Honors from WantedDesign, a platform that promotes design and fosters the international creative community at large.
Furniture manufacturing is a wasteful industry. It has been linked to illegal logging and rainforest destruction, child labour, and extensive air and water pollution, during both production and transportation from remote countries. Even in the case of furniture that eliminates or minimises some of the above, the generated waste is considerable. But rubber is relatively easy to recycle says the designer.
Assouline-Lichten says that her inspiration comes from the materials themselves, and how they can be combined to create different spatial effects. “A perfectly cubed piece of stone, a rubber and cast concrete side table: These are not the way we traditionally experience those materials,” she says. “I find that, in creating new spaces for materials to exist, a sense of intrigue is created.”
