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London designer Asif Khan has produced an installation of chairs and tables made of freeze-dried flowers as part of the Designers in Residence program at the Design Museum London.

Called Harvest, the project aims to produce furniture from plants commonly found in London.

The furniture takes advantage of the Gypsophila plant’s natural ability to interlock.

The harvested plant material is put into moulds and freeze-dried over several weeks before being bonded with a linseed oil-based resin.

The project will remain on show in The Tank outside the museum until 15 March.

Here’s some more information from Asif Khan:

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Harvest is a project developed for my current show at the Design Museum London as part of the “Designers in Residence” program. This year five designers were invited by the museum to each develop context-specific proposals for their residencies which could communicate to the wide range of visitors to the museum.

The project’s starting point was to explore using London’s plant life as a raw material for everyday products. The process developed to create the furniture combines weaving, moulding, freeze-drying and hardening. An industrial freeze-drying chamber was used to preserve the moulded plant material through the extraction of the water content over several weeks. The furniture was then fused using a linseed oil based resin.

The process led to exploiting the plant’s existing branching structure and natural ability to aggregate and interlock. The structures though minimal, span and fill large volumes. Their forms are robust yet delicate. This project was a chance to reconsider our connection with everyday objects, the materials that surround us and with those we choose to live with. Asif’s installation appears in the Design Museum Tank on the riverside frontage of the museum. The exhibition runs until March 15th and also features new work from Bethan Wood and the design collective Farm.

Exhibition information:
Title: Designers in Residence, Design Museum
Address: Design Museum, Shad Thames, London SE1 2YD
Schedule: 27th January – 15th March, 2010