Okay, so we learned yesterday why bent plywood is such a cool material for TreeHuggers; today is all about the eye candy. Bent ply lends itself very well to the sleek, modern shapes that induces drooling at TreeHugger HQ; because so much of it is made from a single sheet, it’s nearly impossible to overdo the design or clutter up the design. It’s clean and green; it’s hard to go wrong with that.

1) Inspired by a tree trunk, the clever Twin chairs [www.treehugger.com] (above) by Italy’s Euga Design offer an interesting combination of stackability and Yin/Yang-type unity. Cosmic.
2) With a nod to the past and a peek to the future, Michael Malmborg’s WING Chair [www.treehugger.com] may just join the ranks of other classic loungers by folks with names like Eames and Jacobsen.
3) A quick glance at Breuer’s Isokon Short and Long chairs [www.treehugger.com], designed in 1935-36, and still manufactured by IsokonPlus in the UK, reveals ‘truth to materials’ and the modernist ethic of design to improve well-being.
4) Check out Welsh super-designer Ross Lovegrove’s Orbit Chair [www.treehugger.com], a stackable dining chair made of bent plywood that’s about as mod as they come.

5) Exploring the versatility and maximizing the functionality of one small sheet of birch plywood, designer Eli Chissick came up with “The Bend,” [www.treehugger.com] (above) a clever series of fruit bowls (though you could probably put some veggies in there, too, if you wanted to) that use the hand-bent ply to create some neat shapes and some functional structure.
6) Aswoon, a design firm in Brooklyn, has a line of pretty wild bent plywood furniture [www.treehugger.com] whose designs emphasize the flow of the wood through the use striated colors.
7) Up and coming designer Erin Mulrooney uses just one shape [www.treehugger.com] (in six identical pieces) to transform a piece from bench to single seat to love seat…cool!
Design company Offi has fully embraced the bent ply look, cranking out a groovy magazine stand [www.treehugger.com], desk [www.treehugger.com] (below) and more.

9) Of course, we’d be remiss not to mention our pal Peter Danko, who could just about source you an entire houseful of furniture: a rocking chair [www.treehugger.com], the “Cricket” side chair [www.treehugger.com], and Spyder side table [www.treehugger.com] are a good-looking start.

Each Friday, we like to kick back and highlight a product or industrial designer doing really interesting, really cool work. It’s not just that we like eye candy and want something nice to look at as we ease into the weekend; we think it’s important to know that there is a better way to do things. Better materials, better manufacturing processes and better designs built to last all add up to a lighter footprint, and that’s why we like to train the spotlight on companies like InModern [www.inmodern.net]: because they do it better than conventional alternatives.

Using FSC-certified birch plywood (FSC-wha?? Read this [www.sundancechannel.com] to get up to speed), finished with non-toxic lacquers, that doesn’t employ hardware (bolts, screws, nuts, or even glue) or tools to assemble, it’s all manufactured here in the US. They have the beginnings of four different collections so far; the Linear [www.inmodern.net] collection (coffee table w/magazine storage is pictured) is the most complete, and they have some good looking stuff in the “coming soon” section of the others, like the “rekindle [www.inmodern.net]“, “surfin [www.inmodern.net]” (the magazine rack is below, on the left) and “intown [www.inmodern.net]” (occasional table below, right) collections. It’s all very clean, simple-looking design, made with earth-friendly materials, waste-reducing, pollution-conscious manufacturing and built to last beyond the next trend. We don’ recommend going out and buying all of this furniture (or all the designs from previous spotlights, for that matter), but it’s still good to know that there are better ways of doing things out there, and InModern gets it right, from start to finish.