GREENSBORO — If it’s about the bottom line but it’s not about the money, it’s most definitely about design. Pure, sustainable, functional design. And for local designers Adrian Boggs and Adam Gregory, that’s the bottom line when it comes to furniture.
On Friday, they’ll unveil their collaborative show, “The Bottom Line,” featuring interior furnishings made from the waste of High Point’s furniture industry.
Boggs and Gregory met while studying interior architecture at UNCG, where they discovered a mutual interest in designing and building interior furnishings with reclaimed and waste-stream materials from the local furniture industry.
“One of the things we recognize and that we have not noticed with other design colleagues is that we have an ability to communicate clearly –– like talking and thinking in 3-D,” Boggs said. “It’s a different thing to find –– to be able to communicate with someone on that level without drawing it. We share the same vision on how things are done, how they’re built and the best way to go about it.”
Boggs and Gregory produce pieces that reflect contemporary, mid-century modern design influences. Their sleek designs are often derived from traditional elements, but the final product has a contemporary look.
“I feel strongly that really good designs don’t have a lot of fluff,” Boggs said. “It’s more of a challenge to come up with a successful design that is very minimal and clean.”
Their designs may be clean, but getting the materials to build them is one dirty job. Dumpster-diving, scouring old warehouses full of discarded furniture parts and remnants –– this is part of the creative process for Boggs and Gregory. It’s also a step toward becoming part of the solution to what they believe is a global problem of waste — particularly furniture-industry waste.
“We have started writing a chapter, so to speak, in our design careers that is about reclaiming and reusing materials,” Boggs said.
Boggs tells a story of how he and Gregory walked into a warehouse space in Lexington that was full of thousands of old chair and table legs.
“When you see something in that kind of volume, a fuse is lit,” he said. “It’s like, 'This is almost overload. How do we find a solution for this?’ ”
Gregory said locating resources is the most difficult step.
“Coming up with the design and constructing it is easier than finding the people who have waste for us to use,” he said. “Most people would have no idea what is in a Dumpster at a furniture manufacturer. There are tons and tons of pieces that can be turned into wonderful things.”
Through the show, Boggs and Gregory hope to challenge others to re-evaluate how trash is defined while promoting a new approach to interior design.
“We would love for people to walk away interested and to start a dialogue,” Boggs said. “We want them to see that beautiful things can be made from things being thrown away. If a designer is able to take materials or an object and change it or modify it and turn it into something it wasn’t — a value-added object — that’s the potential we would like for people to see.”
Contact Rebecca Warren at becca.l.warren@gmail.com
