Culture of Care : Fostering Circularity of Furniture

The rate at which the human race is exhausting the planet’s resources, a transition from a linear economy to a circular economy has become necessary. More importantly the success of circular economy is dependent on the consumer’s everyday actions and practices. This project looks to contribute to that smooth transition at a consumer behavior level of furniture consumption through market actions. It specifically focuses on the sustainable consumption of the sofas to be able to collect data and actionable insights so that it can serve as an example that can be applied to all types of furniture. The project created a framework from literature review on consumer behavior of furniture, sustainability and circular economy. Furthermore, it used several design methods to collect and analyze the data, before arriving at the final design project. The resulting project is called the ‘culture of care’. Based on the collected actionable insights throughout the project, the culture of care project proposes several circular based market actions in the form of service design, product design and product-service design to maintain and repair sofas in the hands of the consumers