Origins

 

I combine digital design-and-manufacture techniques with traditional craftmanship to create bespoke plywood furniture, from bed-side tables to built-in wardrobes and fitted kitchens.

 

I founded Koa Designs in 2019 when it became clear to me that there was a market for the stuff I was making for my own house. At first, it was just a few family members asking for engraved toyboxes or coffee tables. Then their friends started making requests and before I knew it, I was creating bespoke projects for customers across the UK.

 

I operate out of my workshop in on the Wirral in northwest England, where my designs are manufactured on a precision-cutting machine before being assembled and finished by hand.

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The Environment

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Koa Design is a sustainable conscious manufacturer of bespoke furniture. Sustainability for us is not about ticking boxes. It’s an essential approach to design that drives many of our innovations. It's at the forefront of our minds when we put pen to (recycled) paper. It drives us to be better. It's a journey with no end. But with every step we take we learn how to be better, we develop new ideas, we set new and greener standards, and we discover a new environmental barrier. So, we learn again and innovate new ways around it and so the journey continues.

 

It's a given!

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• We use materials from sustainable sources. 

• We utilize the precision of CNC manufacturing to squeeze out as much from a plywood board as possible and so minimize waste. 

• We produce everything to order to reduce energy consumption. 

• We aim to produce high-quality furniture that will last a lifetime. 

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What more can we possibly do? The ironic thing is, as a teacher of Product Design, I had been teaching approaches to sustainable design for years. The reality is, teaching principles and theory is one thing, practicing it in real life is another, not impossible, just not that easy. Now I put myself in my pupils' shoes, observing one of my extremely engaging and more inspiring lessons- today's lesson:

Planned Obsolescence and Cradle to Cradle Design. 
Cradle to Cradle Design Product life cycle is at the forefront of our minds at Koa Design when it comes to designing a piece of bespoke furniture. For a sustainable future, considering the entire life cycle of a piece of furniture is vital. 

 

Design Principle

 
When we design something, some of the man questions we ask ourselves include:

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• How can the design avoid using glue, the permanency of glue makes it difficult to separate materials for future use or for repairing items?

• How can the piece of furniture be assembled easily? 

• How can we maximize materials and reduce waste? 

• How can we make sure fitted furniture doesn’t get in the way of maintenance of the building that it's fitted in? 

• How can we change the look of a piece of furniture easily as people's tastes change to prolong its life span? 

• How can we make sure that a piece can be disassembled easily so that materials can be repurposed or recycled easily? 

• What can we do with these materials?

 

It's this level of thought and desire to do better, to be more responsible that should be a standard to everyone who designs things and makes stuff no matter what it is. 

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Circle Economy - Can we achieve that or is it a step too far? 

A circle economy in the business of designing and making furniture, is for me the pinnacle of achieving truly sustainable status. You design a beautiful piece of birch ply furniture, you use it for as long as possible, you salvage materials and components from it, you make something completely new and amazing from them… and the cycle continues. Resources are repurposed as opposed to recycled and the need to consume the world's natural resources to make stuff is reduced. Winner, Winner. You can read more about our efforts to achieve a circular economy in our blog. 

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But come on, it's a piece of furniture made from birch ply. It's going to degrade, you can’t just keep taking the same thing apart and using the same materials over and over again, forever. It’s easy to say that and admit defeat. Tackling this “impossible feat” is exactly what we should be doing and we at Koa Design are doing that. The journey to achieving a circular economy in bespoke furniture provides so many problems and as a designer, I thrive when there are problems to solve. These are opportunities to design, to be groundbreaking, to be innovative, to be responsible. We need to be responsible. Sustainability shouldn’t be a gimmick and it should be more than just recycling.