Our Paper Life's new Room in a Box idea is aimed at minimizing the time and cost required to furnish a room. Each kit contains pieces that slot together without the need for tools or glue to create furniture for an entire bedroom. What's more, it only takes 30 minutes to put together.
The idea of providing a full room's furniture in a box isn't new. Marcel Krings and Sebastian Mühlhäuser from the Köln International School of Design created a similar concept called Casulo some years back, for example. Unlike Casulo, however, the Room in a Box is made entirely of cardboard.
By using cardboard, Toronto-based cardboard design firm Our Paper Life has been able to keep the costs of the kit down. The company is also adamant that the material is still able to create strong and durable units, citing the three years that they have apparently been using some of the units themselves. A water-resistant coating, meanwhile, means that spills aren't a problem.
Our Paper Life says some of the other benefits of the kit include its being 75 percent recycled and 100 percent recyclable. it can apparently be put together and arranged in a variety of different ways and can be disassembled, flattened for transport and reassembled again for use elsewhere.
The idea is said to have come from members of the Our Paper Life team when they were undergraduate students and struggling to furnish student houses each new year or semester. An initial attempt to bring the idea to market was tried in in 2011, with a cardboard desk and shelf that were sold for US$23 each. Following limited interest, however, the company refocused its attentions on selling to businesses.
Since then, however, four years has been spent developing and prototyping the furniture, leading ultimately to the Room in a Box product. Our Paper Life describes it as a "complete solution to furnishing student housing." In addition to containing everything required to furnish a student bedroom, each kit is shipped straight to the door in a box on wheels (also made of cardboard) that can be carried or wheeled around by one person.
Each kit contains the pieces to make a chair, a desk, a wastepaper bin, a bed base and a dresser. The bed and dresser are made of modular "Stax" storage units that can also be slotted together in other configurations.
"The Bed was the tricky part," says CEO of Our Paper Life Geoff Christou. "At first I wondered if it could even be done, but after a lot of testing, we ended up using the storage units with simple connector pieces. It makes for a durable bed frame and allows for extra storage space under the bed."
An Indiegogo campaign is underway to raise money for the production of the Room in a Box. At the time of writing, individuals who pledge from $149 can received an entire Room in a Box kit.
The video below provides an introduction to the Room in a Box and shows a time-lapse of it being assembled.
For other examples of cardboard furniture, check out the offerings from Karton, The Cardboard Guys and Chairigami.
Sources: Our Paper Life, Indiegogo