No Foam KNIT: A Zero-Waste Approach to Upholstery
Self-Assembly Lab, MIT + Emeco
Self-Assembly Lab MIT: Susan Williams, Sasha Mckinlay, Lavender Tessmer, Agnes Parker, Pria Sawhney, Jared Laucks, Skylar Tibbits
Emeco Team: Jaye Buchbinder, Gregg Buchbinder, Alev Oztas
Exhibition Design with Studio Guberan: Noah Stanley, Titouan Longatte, Christophe Guberan
No Foam KNIT challenges traditional furniture design paradigms by focusing on fully knit customizable upholstery that completely eliminates the use of foam, adhesives, assembly, and material waste. This pioneering approach developed through the Self-Assembly Lab’s expertise in industrial knitting not only reduces environmental impact but also reimagines how we think about comfort and aesthetics in furniture.
To achieve this, the team developed new techniques for knit upholstery that can replace foam by providing comparable soft cushioning in a 3D knit structure while also eliminating any assembly or waste by removing cut-and-sew processes. Further, this upholstery can become a fully recyclable mono-material textile, where the yarn acts as both the skin and the foam replacement within the upholstery, eliminating waste at the end-of-life. These techniques not only minimize the footprint of textiles in the furniture industry but they also point towards new manufacturing and assembly possibilities that can be customizable, efficient and lead to new aesthetics through material functionality.
MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab & Emeco’s collaboration seeks to inspire a new generation of designers and consumers to rethink the relationship between materials, manufacturing functionality, and sustainability.
