Carbon fiber may recast future furniture designs

Carbon fiber is a designer's dream -- extremely strong, versatile, elegant and lightweight. On the down side, it has a hefty price tag, which means finding the material in affordable designs is likely to remain a dream -- at least for now.
But carbon fiber, commonly used to make aircraft parts, may now be to furniture and industrial design what titanium was to architecture a few years ago: It's still beyond the reach of most people but the harbinger of the next generation of affordable designs.
Discovered in 1958, carbon fiber is used in fancy golf clubs, bicycle frames and racecars. Designers are now using it to make hard-working and beautiful objects such as furniture and faucets for the home.
Alberto Meda created Light Light, one of the first carbon fiber chairs in 1987 that weighs just 4 pounds and now, contemporary designers are finally following suit. Established & Sons' limited-edition Surface table is one example. The 9-foot-long, one-piece carbon fiber design by Terence Woodgate and Formula One racecar designer John Barnard is knife-edge thin and weighs just 75 pounds. But at a cost of $55,000 it's not for everyone.
Nonetheless, John Giacomazzi, owner of Area home furnishings store in San Francisco, who as a long-distance bicyclist is an aficionado of carbon fiber, regrets he can't show off the sharp Surface table alongside more affordable lamps by Established & Sons in his compact store.
"Carbon fiber is made from extremely thin fibers formed by heating carbon," he said. "They are then fused together with resin." Heat rearranges carbon atoms into strong strands; you can take thousands of these and twist them into a yarn that can be woven, impregnated in plastic resin and molded into any shape. In effect, carbon fibers set in resin are like metal rebar in reinforced concrete.
But unlike concrete, which needs crisscrossing rebar for strength, carbon fiber strands are laid in the same direction. They are like the grain in wood, copper or aluminum. "It is an interesting fact," Giacomazzi said. Because of the strength of the parallel fibers, each of these materials is strong but molded carbon fiber is the lightest of them all.
A new Surface carbon fiber chair, which premiered at the Milan furniture fair in April and was shown again last week at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, costs $7,400 and weighs about 2 pounds.
"The chair can be lifted with just one finger," said Eve Petrucci, owner of Dzine, a tony furniture store in San Francisco's design district that officially represents Established & Sons.
Meanwhile, the relatively affordable $1,100 deck-mount Karbon kitchen faucet by Niels Eilmus from Kohler, introduced last year at the ICFF, has now been issued in several new colors including a matte gold finish that Kohler product manager Kim Viglietti hopes will be popular. The faucet is actually made of a thin-walled stainless steel-coated brass tube slipped into a sleeve of tough, lightweight woven carbon fiber dyed in a variety of colors: black, silver and gold. The new colored versions and a wall-mount version cost more.
"We explored other materials for this articulated, easy-to-adjust faucet meant for spraying or filling pots but carbon fiber is more durable and lighter," Viglietti said. "The five pivoting joints are engineered so even when water flows through our lightweight Karbon, it will stay in place."

At a glance:
Expert opinion: "Designers like to use carbon fiber for its aesthetic elegance. It can be molded very thin and therefore it is lightweight. Its molecular composition makes it very strong," says John Giacomazzi. A carbon fiber car reduces the weight of an auto by nearly 60 percent and that improves its fuel consumption by about 30 percent, he added. While carbon fiber allows cars to be lighter and therefore more efficient, it may be a frivolous material to use for furniture because of its cost.
However when used in small quantities for something like Kohler's Karbon kitchen faucet (and considering Kohler's limited lifetime guarantee), its high cost becomes justifiable. Another good use of carbon fiber is Motorola's carbon fiber Bluetooth receiver that is chic and also lightweight.
Pros: Carbon fiber is light yet extremely strong and durable. It is resistant to fading, tarnishing, corrosion or deterioration from ultraviolet light. It can be used to form beautiful lean silhouettes such as the Surface table or Karbon faucet because it is three times stronger and four times lighter than steel, according to Giacomazzi.
Cons: In the case of the Karbon faucet, it is not the material but the design that has a drawback. Styled like a commercial pull-down variety, the faucet does not toggle from spray to stream mode. "You have to turn off the faucet after you use the spray function and want to return to an even jet of water," Kohler's Viglietti said.
Prices: Kohler's Karbon faucets cost about $1,100-$1,720. The Surface table by Established & Sons costs $55,000; Surface chair costs $7,400.

E-mail Zahid Sardar at zsardar(at)sfchronicle.com.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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