Strand Design’s Ted and Sharon Burdett design and create products that can be manufactured locally using sustainable materials. Their Tree Theory bags are folded rather than sewn, so they can be easily disassembled to replace worn out parts. Even the leather is locally sourced. My favorite Strand Design product is The Good Dog Spotlight, which they made using recycled hardwood floorboards. Ted and Sharon’s latest project is also their biggest to date: handcrafting office furniture using only materials that were salvaged, recycled or sourced from urban lumber (more floorboards) for the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Art + Design office at Jefferson Hall. (Ted is also an assistant professor of industrial design at the school).
“It hadn’t been redesigned for decades, and looked quite outdated,” says Sharon, who saw it as an opportunity to test their concepts on a large scale. “We had to go through a time intensive process of removing nails, cutting the edges to be flush, grading and sorting the pieces according to wood type, length, and width, gluing the floorboards into useable panels, jointing and planing the panels. But I feel that the process has made us so much smarter and so much better at what we do.”
And much like Strand Design’s other products, the finished space is sleek, stylish and functional. Ted and Sharon continue to develop new sustainably designed products and custom furniture for residential, commercial or institutional clients, and they’re interested in working with companies to help reinvent existing products to be more sustainable. Please visit Strand’s website for more information.
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Click here for a tour of Ted and Sharon’s sunny West Loop studio.
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For UIC Specific Projects:
Conference Table: http://stranddesign.org/index.php/2009/12/11/uic-office-furniture-the-conference-table/
Desks and Cabinets: http://stranddesign.org/index.php/2009/12/11/uic-office-furniture-desks-storage-cabinets/
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Strand’s Good Dog Spotlight has a real presence that I can’t quite get it out of my head. Click here and here for more information.
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Sharon and Ted at their studio last year.
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