Graphic Design Office in Eindhoven
Corrugated honeycomb cardboard, a material typically used in temporary structures for the theatre, trade fairs and exhibitions, continues to spark new ideas for applications and designs. A graphic design office and a publishing house leased an external office space for five years. The architects they commissioned decided to create a temporary interior using only this material. In keeping with the project’s cradle-to-cradle philosophy, the desks, bookshelves and partition walls are all made of corrugated honeycomb cardboard. The material is manufactured using recycled paper and is stable, economical, and lightweight. It is available in different thicknesses, and can, when the project has run its course, be recycled once again. It can also easily be perforated, sawed and cut. The architects clad the walls of the 200 m² orthogonal space entirely in this material; niches and shelves cut out of the walls provide space for work stations and storage space. The dominant element is a long table, not surprisingly, of cardboard, which can be used for meetings or for presentations. An unusual office atmosphere was created – exactly what the clients requested. And it was about thirty percent cheaper than a conventional solution employing plasterboard would have been. The fire-retardant coating required by code is a reasonable concession to human safety, but is not consonant with the ecological intentions.
