Wrapped Waste Furniture
A new collection by Pfeifer Design
4 pieces of sculptural furniture in conjunction with Exuberante Caos using local, recycled materials from Lipor and will be part of the UPintheAR! exhibition on Rua Brito Capelo, Matosinhos from 01 October - 31 December 2025.
Pfeifer is a London born, Porto based design studio where well considered furniture emerges from a combination of technical expertise and a willingness to play. Our furniture and works are a celebration of materials combined with usability, functionality and multi-award winning prowess.
We were recently invited by local start-up ‘Exuberante Caos’ to participate in their street art meets technology UP in the AR! exhibition. In this special collaboration we were given the opportunity to play and experiment without the confines of usability and functionality. The opportunity to create sculptural furniture pieces just for enjoyment and to take inspiration in the materials we found that had been discarded.
Our brief was to visit our local recycling centre and sponsor Lipor, in Porto to see what they had available. We rummaged through the furniture collection stations and found a box of used, heavy duty orange webbed straps with ratchets still attached, that set our thoughts in motion. A small broken wooden table and a couple of mis-matched school chairs and stool frames.
Leonhard and I had a quick exchange of ideas before heading to the electrical recycling warehouse, where we snipped and collected another large container of electrical cord. No real plan in mind… just wild ideas and words running through our heads like “Wrap it all in orange”, “wrap it all in cord!”
Back in our studio we had a bit of time to sketch, think, sort and clean all the materials.
The school chairs brought up a lot of nostalgia for me, personally as they reminded me of my primary school chairs and being hot and sweaty sitting on the plastic coated wooden seats and the idea to wrap the chair frames in the electrical cords (plastic) formed.
I grew up in the 70’s and would holiday as a child in North Queensland at my grandparents' caravan which they parked up by the creek. It was furnished with these, now iconic, folding plastic chairs and each door had PVC plastic strips to keep the flies and mosquitoes out. These folding chairs were hot and sticky to sit on and always had bits of the wrapping sticking out. I loved to fiddle with the loose ends as a kid, but was always told off when I did.
We took the wooden seats off the chair frames and the shape of both frames really worked well together, mirroring each other and I loved the combination of black and gold metal. I separated the cords into the 2 main colours of white and black and luckily, there was enough of each to wrap both chairs. Serendipitously, the black cord looked great on the gold frame and the white cord worked on the black frame! I love the rumpled wrapping and the obviousness of the cord sockets and cut ends. Are the chairs comfortable? No, but it is possible to sit on them.
Leonhard really loved the webbing straps (orange being his favourite colour) and had the idea of using the ratchet to hold together materials to form a coffee table. Working with construction off-cuts and some timber packaging he strapped it all up with no glue, no nails, just clever assembly and strength. After a lot of measuring and cutting he had the basic idea mapped out of the floor. Creating the table in reverse, with 4 long legs jutting up from the assemblage, the form was wrapped with the strap, tightened and flipped over. It stood perfectly, strong, stable and level! Did I say he is a big believer in physics and maths? We then burned the top of the sculptural table outside on the street, under the cover of darkness and oiled it with an outdoor furniture oil to protect it from the weather.
The 4 finished pieces are now on display as part of a treasure hunt and on display along Rua Brito Capelo, 175 Matosinhos from 01 October - 31 December.
Pfeifer Design created 4 pieces of sculptural furniture in conjunction with exuberantecaos using local, recycled materials from Lipor and will be part of the UPintheAR! exhibition on Rua Brito Capelo, Matosinhos.
Sponsors include ESAD, Porto Design Biennale, Lipor, Leroy Merlin, CIN and CJD and a big thank you to Exuberante Caos for organising us.
Please feel free to contact us if you have a project that we can collaborate on. We are very friendly and full of ideas with years of design and technical expertise.
x Karla and Leonhard