A new design collaboration in American Hardwoods in partnership with Always Welcome and Houtlander.
The designs created for this project will be one-off functional objects or furniture pieces, suitable for indoor use, for domestic or public realms. Image credit: AHEC
Seven of South Africa’s leading designer-makers have been tasked with creating an object or piece of furniture that fully encapsulates the themes of sustainability, longevity, and quality. AHEC, the leading international trade association for the American hardwood industry, has announced the launch of Future Heirlooms, undertaken in partnership with South African design cooperative Always Welcome, legacy AHEC collaborators Houtlander and timber importers and distributors BOS Timbers.
The project draws inspiration from the AHEC’s many high-profile and ambitious collaborations to date in Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and South Africa. These projects have included multiple design teams, imaginative briefs, innovative designs and the very best of wood craftsmanship, to celebrate the beauty, performance, and sustainability of American hardwoods.
Future Heirlooms sets out with seven leading South African furniture and product designers, under the mentorship of the Always Welcome leadership team, to create an object or a piece of furniture that fully encapsulates the themes of sustainability, longevity and quality. How do our objects help promote these themes in an increasingly fast-paced world? How can we foster a sense of thoughtful, intentional, and holistic design in order to slow down excessive production, overcomplicated supply chains, mindless consumption and waste?
The participating designers for the inaugural Future Heirlooms project are Dokter and Misses, Kalki Studio, Joe Paine Studio, Mash T Design Studio, The Urbanative, Kumsuka Design and Node Design.
The designs created for this project, due to be launched at an exhibition at Always Welcome in Kramerville, Johannesburg in October 2022, will be one-off functional objects or furniture pieces, suitable for indoor use, for domestic or public realms. They will be manufactured in American red oak from BOS Timbers and created by a team of expert craftsmen by manufacturing partner Houtlander, whose previous AHEC collaborations have been exhibited across the globe.
Roderick Wiles, AHEC Regional Director says, “we love working with South African designers and this project gives us the opportunity to work with a really accomplished team of partners too. Future Heirlooms has been conceived as a means of demonstrating how considered design with a renewable and low carbon material – American red oak – can help us all to rethink our patterns of consumption.”
Wood is renewable and easily recycled. It can be used both as a material and a fuel; it is low impact and a carbon store. Strong for its weight, wood is also tactile, versatile, and visually appealing, adding warmth to interiors and benefiting people’s health. With the world facing the ever-increasing impacts of climate change and of over-consumption of high-impact materials, the emphasis needs to shift to the environmental merits of making more use of what nature is growing.
“It’s an honour and privilege for Always Welcome and our designers to be participating in a project with a group like AHEC. With our design stable’s work expanding ever further into new, and often experimental manufacturing processes and materials, we’re excited to embrace elements of their pioneering approach toward sustainability to push the local design vocabulary forward and continue their longstanding partnership with the South African design scene. We’re also extremely fortunate to have Houtlander bring the ambitious designs to life, without whom the knowledge and manufacturing needed to create these ambitious pieces would be impossible.” — Garreth van Niekerk, Director and co-founder of the Always Welcome cooperative.
Follow the design journey on the AHEC and Always Welcome social media platforms over the coming months, and make sure to keep an eye out for exhibition information as we near the completion date of this exciting initiative.
