Waste not, want not with cardboard stool The Freefold stool designed by Tobias Horrocks. AFTER more than 14 years working in architecture, Tobias Horrocks is saying it with cardboard. A pop-up cardboard stool, to be precise. The 41-year-old architect left John Wardle Architects, one of the industry's most lauded firms, and moved sideways into design. He set up his own practice, Fold Theory, which encompasses cardboard design, installation design, recycled furniture and interior design, as well as pure architecture. His latest piece, the Freefold stool, right, assembles in less than two minutes from three identical pieces of cardboard: no tools needed. Each stool costs $30. The furniture is made with 100 per cent recycled cardboard, sourced from post-consumer waste-paper and sustainably-managed plantation wood fibre. "Everything I do is designed to be returned to flatpack and recycled," Horrocks says. That's the interesting thing about cardboard, it is a weak material. Its weakness is a challenge, you are thinking to create ways to make it strong using folds. The beautiful thing about its weakness is that it's kind of a strength. It is a soft material, it doesn't end up in hard rubbish, it will always be recycled. Double corrugation and multiple folds increase the strength of the stool, while its handles integrate into the design and allow for easy transportation. Its inter-connectedness allows Freefold stools to link and form larger furniture pieces. And its design makes mass production easy. The stool is made from three identical pieces and each piece is folded in on itself. In effect you are sitting on six corners of a box, even though you don't see those corners," Horrocks explains. The pieces of the stool are made in a similar way to a cardboard box, with a giant cookie cutter-type machine slicing and folding at the same time. The economies of scale kick in nicely. Horrocks, pictured right, spent more than 14 years as an architect, including at John Wardle. I left to get some creative satisfaction from my own work; I didn't initially intend to do that with furniture. While he recognised the durability of the concrete-and-steel projects he was working on, living in the CBD and seeing skips filling up with reusable waste led him to examine his direction. We all like new stuff, but we all need to take responsibility for what happens afterwards. Cardboard turned out to be this amazing guilt-free area to explore. The Freefold stool has won a number of local gongs. It won the sustainable and waste-wise category at the Fringe Furniture awards at the Melbourne Fringe Festival as well as the unbuilt ArchiTeam Award, an award to promote Victorian architecture. In addition, Melbourne's City of Banyule council has purchased multiple stools and formed them into bench seats to include in its sustainable architecture collection. It has also placed the stool in the permanent collection of its art gallery. Horrocks built a prototype of the stool two years ago and it is still going strong. Structurally, it will remain sound for many, many years. It has got a bit of character to it, but it is still looking good. Horrocks saw the potential in pop-out cardboard furniture after designing a storage unit, the Freefold Popup Box ($88). The possibility of cardboard is that you can brand it up, you can print logos on it and it is not very expensive. foldtheory.com Stephen Brook is the editor of Weekend A Plus.