Plywood used by shop owners to board up their properties during the 2020 protests has been repurposed by a trio of Australian architects as outdoor furniture for hospitality venues.
BVN’s Nick Flutter, Nikita Notowidigo and Bill Dowzer got their hands on the plywood after calling the Rockefeller Centre and receiving 300 sheets. The plywood was then collected in a van, designed and cut by hand into chairs, tables, road barriers and planter boxes now used across New York. The endeavour was so successful it is now operating as a business, known as Re-Ply.
“We were just in this terrible situation and there was so much awful stuff happening and we just wanted to do something good,” says Nick Flutter in an interview with The Australian.
“We really did not want all that plywood that covered the city going to landfill.”
“We had these two ideas about kit-of-parts furniture and recycling and sustainability and circularity of plywood that we were trying to weave together,” Flutter said “It seemed like a cool thing to do and a good experiment to do something here to see if we could push it a bit further.”
The idea came at a time of opportunity, with the City of New York introducing a policy after the protests stating that venues could reopen providing they had a suitable amount of outdoor dining at the front of the premises.
“The streets feel extremely vibrant and I think outdoor dining has given the city this new vibe it didn’t have before,” Flutter says.
“The streets are now full of these semi permanent structures that can be something as simple as some planter boxes and tables and chairs, which is what you may see in Sydney. But they can also be as complex as fully air conditioned buildings with double glazing.”
Re-Ply has now installed 25 furniture kits across the big apple, includiing the renowned Gramercy Tavern. Plywood that has been painted or graffitied has also been showcased as part of the movement.
For more information, visit re-ply.org.
