VANCOUVER.- Created in partnership with Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Wilson School of Design (KPU) and the Museum of Vancouver (MOV), Future Makers: Chairs by New Designers brings together sustainability, design innovation and a critical reflection on the history of everyday material.


🚀 See What Everyone's Reading! Explore Amazon's current bestsellers and find your next great read.


MOV issued a challenge: transform decades-old marine-grade mahogany into chairs fit for a new era. The material had a story: once used by Vancouver’s marine industry, it sat fallow for decades before it was donated to the MOV. The objective was simple turn forgotten material into something useful again. KPU didn’t just accept the challenge. The school built an entire curriculum around it.


✨ Empower art news! Help ArtDaily continue its mission. Click to donate via PayPal or join our community on Patreon.


The KPU student design teams created 15 original chair prototypes using this vintage wood—wood that is rooted in a deeper and more difficult history: the extractive trade of tropical hardwoods that contributed to widespread deforestation across Central America. When the MOV accepted the donation, it meant acknowledging that legacy. Students were invited to engage with the wood’s colonial past and environmental cost. Together, the partners agreed that proceeds from any future chair sales will support Indigenous-led reforestation programs in Guatemala—a commitment to repair that was embedded in the project.

Through collaborative mentorship, KPU faculty and MOV staff encouraged students to approach design not just as a technical exercise, but as an opportunity for cultural and ecological stewardship. The resulting works are surprising, thoughtful, and often poetic. Each chair is a meditation on connection, responsibility and what it means to shape the future through design.

“In engaging with the legacy of the mahogany, we also engage with our role in systems of extraction, trade and repair,” says Viviane Gosselin, MOV’s Director of Collections and Exhibitions. “Future Makers is about more than form and function. It’s about reckoning with inherited materials and imagining how design can become a tool for change.”

“Future Makers inspires us to continue building on this positive change, leaving a thoughtful footprint that future generations can trace through the many layers of mahogany heritage,” Iryna Karaush, the instructor at KPU who led the project says. “Each layer reveals stories of resilience, reinvention and cultural continuity.”

In addition to the chairs, Future Makers will include a maker space where visitors can create their own chairs from recycled cardboard.



Artdaily participates in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn commissions by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. When you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. These commissions help us continue curating and sharing the art world’s latest news, stories, and resources with our readers.