This cardboard and rope chair seeks to redemocratise design with ‘joyful frugality’

Walking through Pierre Jeanneret’s home in Chandigarh last year, where sunlight is filtered to near heavenly effect by brick jalis, architect, writer and photographer Nipun Prabhakar found himself reflecting on the designer’s celebrated teak library chairs. Once conceived as utilitarian hostel furniture, the 1950s design is now prized at auctions in Paris and beyond. For Prabhakar – who co-runs design studio Dhammada Collective alongside Simran Channa and Nilesh Suman – the disconnect was striking. ‘The dissonance was loud,’ he says. ‘Furniture conceived as public utility transfigured into luxury commodity.’

Back in his home city of Bhopal, the team posed a question: if a chair can be elevated by fetish value alone, can it also be humbled – re-earthed – by waste?

Dhammada Collective's 'Paper Tube' chair

The project began with a simple act of salvage. Twice a month, the offset print shop down the lane from the collective's studio discards a small mountain of cardboard cores. These thick tubes, made unrecyclable locally due to a glue layer that inhibits pulping, are destined for landfill. ‘We talked to Sachin, the print shop owner, and asked him to save them for us,’ explains Prabhakar. After rescuing a few tubes for quick studio mock-ups, their silent presence began to hint at a larger possibility.

Could these industrial leftovers be used to make a real seat? ‘The very thought felt mischievous, almost heretical – and that’s exactly why we chased it,’ says Prabhakar. Inspired by Shigeru Ban’s use of paper tubes in architecture, the team – including Prabhakar, Channa, Suman and intern Joy Hrangkhawl – began experimenting on a micro scale.

Their first instinct was to recreate a Chandigarh chair in cardboard. ‘It failed marvellously: glue sheared, legs splayed, tubes buckled,’ recalls Prabhakar. But failure proved a crucial turning point, prompting the team to abandon imitation and pursue intent instead. The result is the 'Paper Tube' chair – not a replica, but an experiment in fairness, repairability, and what they call ‘joyful frugality’.

The structure is deceptively simple: cut like bamboo, 15 paper tubes are bound together using a continuous figure-eight lashing in bright vermilion rope, left over from a weaving workshop. ‘Where cardboard dislikes drilling, rope performs a quiet miracle,’ says Prabhakar. The rope tightens under load, flexes with movement, and keeps each component replaceable. ‘Early prototypes collapsed in spectacular fashion, teaching us to insert smaller tubes at key joints and to trust tension over glue.’

The tubes are kept hollow, doubling as discreet storage pockets. ‘Slide a notebook into one arm, tuck away spectacles in another, or store pencils under the seat,’ he suggests.

One challenge was edge wear caused by friction and weight. ‘To solve this, we 3D-printed protective bases for the bottoms,’ says Prabhakar. ‘We also reinforced the rope holes with 3D-printed washers.’ The result is a design that’s honest about its origins: each tube is finished with a thin coat of varnish that seals the fibres but leaves every scratch and printer’s code visible, a subtle nod to its past life.

For Dhammada, the 'Paper Tube' chair is an open-source invitation for others to experiment. ‘If you can grab a few print-shop tubes and some rope, you already have everything you need,’ says Prabhakar. ‘Lashing is a skill to be learnt, but beyond that, I’m keeping the project light – just an invitation. I’ll be happy to share our experiences and failures with anyone interested.’

The team is now developing a series of paper-tube birdhouses in various shapes and sizes. ‘It’s a simple way to show how far an overlooked waste stream can travel when you treat it as structure, not scrap.’

dhammadacollective.com