Flatpack furniture is eco-friendly and can be assembled in minutes

A Canadian startup has designed a line of sustainable, stylish flatpack furniture that can be put together quickly with no tools

Spotted: Anyone who has ever wrestled with assembling flatpack furniture will know the frustration of Allen keys, screwdrivers and poorly thought-out instructions —  not to mention the disappointment when the furniture fails to survive the next house move. Startup staxxiom™ has developed a line of sustainable, stylish flatpack furniture that can be put together in minutes – no tools required.

Husband-and-wife team, Richard Langone and Leilei Peng, developed their first line of “no tools, no hassle” flat-pack furniture in Asia in 2017. They used computer numerical control (CNC) precision cutting machines to develop furniture that could simply snap together. The new line, which is being launched through a Kickstarter campaign, expands on this with injection moulding technology and a “click to assemble” process.

The staxxiom™ line of furniture is engineered from sustainably sourced high-density fibreboard (as opposed to the particleboard used in most flatpack designs). This material is made from compressed recycled hardwood sawdust and resin, and has a lifetime of around twenty years, as compared to five years for particleboard. The staxxiom™ furniture is also designed to be versatile, so it can stay relevant and functional, with one piece serving as “a university dorm room stool, a studio apartment bedside table, a sun room plant stand, [and] a toddler’s play table,” all at once.

Langone and Peng told Springwise that the thinking behind the brand is that “Few consumers have the time or patience to build today’s supposedly easy flat-pack furniture pieces themselves. In fact, an entire service industry has sprung up just to alleviate the annoyance of putting them together. staxxiom™’s patented click-to-assemble furniture solves this problem—every product can be assembled in under two minutes and without tools – so no need to hire a Task Rabbit! Our core design philosophy is about minimalism and the idea that simpler is better.”

Sustainability is not only about the materials involved, but about making products designed to last – so consumers do not need to keep buying new products and throwing out the old ones. Springwise has covered a number of innovations from companies that utilise this thinking, including a toy designed to reused and recycled and modular furniture that requires no tools.

Explore more: Architecture & Design Innovations | Sustainability Innovations