French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance has used discarded burnt cork to create this furniture collection featuring sinuous forms and a gradient of textures.
Created through Duchaufour-Lawrance's Portugal-based studio Made in Situ, the Burnt Cork collection of chairs and tables are all carved from blocks of cork, similar to those used in buildings as insulation.
The Burnt Cork chairs and tables are made from blocks of cork
Duchaufour-Lawrance developed his own twist on the process to incorporate the rougher textures of burnt cork, which is usually an industrial waste product.
The seed for the collection was planted when the designer first moved to Portugal in the summer of 2017. He did the three-day drive from France alone, encountering devastating forest fires in the hills of Pedrógão Grande along the way. The sinuous forms are cut from the blocks using a seven-axis CNC machine
"It was a shock to drive into these hills ablaze, the inferno consuming the landscape and leaving behind a world of visible entropy," Duchaufour-Lawrance said in a blog post. "The power of fire struck me, one of the five elements vital to existence on earth, a keystone to the development of culture."
"Fire is somehow always beautiful," he continued. "Part of me didn't want to think about this, but I took photos and this experience stayed with me. It made me question my interaction with nature as a designer and as a consumer. I felt it would resurface in the work...