A group of design students from Germany's Angewandte Kunst Schneeberg have created a collection of furniture made of felt wrapped around simple wooden frameworks.Â
The students used fibre composite Lanisor – a lightweight, flexible felt-like material – combining it with wooden panels and dowels.
Shown at furniture fair IMM Cologne, the range includes a bench made from only a single pair of rods, with Lanisor threaded through and zigzagging around them, and a cradle with a removable felt bed that can be transformed into a hanging seat.
The furniture is designed to explore the felt's potential, and contrast its "haptically appealing" surface with wood's solidity.
"The material Lanisor opens up new possibilities in use," Angewandte Kunst Schneeberg's head of Wood Design Jacob Strobel told Dezeen. "It combines the characteristics of felt and a plate material."
"The challenge was to get a 3D shape out of a flat material just by cutting, folding and sticking parts together," added Strobel.
The pieces are designed to be both long-lasting and, in some cases, customisable. The baby's cradle is intended to be used throughout a child's life, becoming a swing once its purpose as a bed is outgrown.
The students used traditional woodworking tools and machines to shape the felt, which can be folded much like paper but remains as stiff as wood.
Students made the most of Lanisor's flexibility, bending it around simple wooden frameworks to form shelving with an unusual curved structure. A slanted bookshelf has shelves made from wooden panels slicing through the felt.
A series of stacking boxes is made from pieces of felt that slot into one another, and are held in place by wooden dowels.
Students at the Bartlett School of Architecture have also experimented with the possibilities of felt, using it to create a composite material that could be stitched together to create tubular furniture.