Liquid Wood Furniture

This is the Zartan chair designed by Philippe Starck with Eugeni Quitllet. It's a new approach to industrial production in a post-plastic era made of a sort of 'liquid wood'. The new technology uses wood powder (derived from discarded wood pulp-based lignin) mixed with a variety of other natural materials (fibers and wax or fish oil) to create a strong, non-toxic alternative to petroleum-based plastics. Under high-pressure conditions, they say that the composite material behaves like melted plastic, allowing it to be injected through a nozzle into a mold.

Starck said in a Designboom interview, "Plastic is non-biodegradable and can contain carcinogens and other toxic substances that can cause cancer; It is based on petroleum, a non-renewable resource that will soon be harder to come by. This new technology explores the advantages of using natural materials to understand what will be our daily future."