Furniture From Recycled Toys Edit
Greg Lynn's Eco Welding

Greg Lynn won the Golden Lion for the best installation project at the 2008 Venice Architectural Biennale, for this series of furniture made from recycled children’s toys.

The pieces include four tables with plastic panelite tops, a low bench, a storage wall, a coat rack and a cylindrical shoe closet.

Lynn has two children and he recycles their unused toys into ‘bricks’ to create furniture and other usable objects. The toys are laser scanned and digitized into a computer. Their intersections are defined as cutting paths and then a robot precisely cuts their joints and connections. The toy bricks are then welded together with a tool that is normally used to repair car fenders.

The end result is fantastic, but given the complex nature of their construction, these are probably not an ideal DIY project for overwhelmed parents with a house cluttered full of unused toys.