The Urban Furnishing Project, by Team Furniture, tackels the idea of extended usage.

San Francisco is a very transient city, populated by people who relocate frequently. The city also lacks an effec­tive method for residents to dispose of their unwanted furnishings. These two factors conspire to create an abundance of abandoned furniture on city streets, most of which falls to ruin before it can be reclaimed and thus needs to be hauled away and disposed of at taxpayer expense. Team Furniture’s solution is to employ skilled craftsmen in the form of the Urban Furnishing Project. By collecting abandoned furniture and then either refreshing, refurbishing or repurposing it, they will improve longer product lifespan and extend usage, thus dramatically reducing municipal waste, landfill and expense.

This project is a response to GOOD Magazine’s design challenge to Academy of Art University students as part of its ongoing Design for Cities initiative. Each student team utilized the Living Principles framework and scorecard to guide and evaluate their efforts.

Team Furniture: Kayla Ferriera, Sa Nguyen, Sarah Seward

Course: R3 Lab

Instructor: Tom Sieu, Instructor, Academy of Art University School of Graphic Design

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Urban Energy Initiative

The Greenhouse Cartel

Project Zero-Waste

The Urban Runnoff Project

Project Firefly