Nearly 2 million Christmas trees are discarded each holiday season in London, but one designer has tapped into this waiting source of pine wood to construct a creative natural series of unique recycled benches, tables, stools and storage furniture designs.

Their creator, Fabien Cappello, claims that the driving force behind these designs, however, is not sustainability – it is the abundance of a local easy-to-use material. With so much wood available he determined that he could employ extremely simple tools to craft the trunks into tops, branches into legs and pine needles into surfaces.

The concept for these furniture designs was in part inspired by the antique tradition of lashing available logs together to form rafts that would float for months at a time, becoming their own subcultural communities on the water during times when lumber was plentiful. Likewise, with Christmas pine trees simply sitting by the side of the road after the holiday season, there is an opportunity to take what is around and free to craft something creative and new.

There is around 1.8 million Christmas trees in the street of London every January. I took advantage of this huge amount of wood which is shipped every year to the city. I investigated the finite economy of Christmas trees drawing on this local resource to create furniture from the discarded wood.”

About the artist:

“Studio Fabien Cappello is a spacial and furniture firm based in Mexico City since 2016. The studio first opened in 2010 in London, to produce work in different contexts; from commercial objects to specific editions and public environments. All works share a high consideration for both, craft techniques and industrial production, reflecting design through people and their interactions with space, environment and material culture.”

“Fabien Cappello (France, 1984) is a furniture and product designer. He studied at the University of Art and Design (ECAL) in Lausanne, Switzerland and in 2009 obtained a Master’s degree in Design Products at the Royal College of Art of London under the tutelage of Martino Gamper and Jurgen Bey. He founded his eponymous studio in 2010 in London. Much of Cappello’s studio early work explores the idea of the creative use of local resources and local manufacture.”