Tom Fereday collaborates with AHEC at Sydney Design Week 2022

External Review, a collaboration between the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), award winning designer Tom Fereday, furniture manufacturers Evostyle and upholstery specialists,

Swiss Design, was unveiled at this year’s Sydney Design Week 2022. On display at the Australian Design Centre, the collaboration celebrated Fereday’s latest work, the Cove lounge, including the entire design process from the source of the raw material through to manufacture and final presentation with the purpose of shared learning.

“It is important for me as a designer to stop and reflect on some of the processes that have become somewhat intuitive in my work. We have become accustomed to working at a fast pace to respond to the demands of the market. Opening my work up to external review is an opportunity to consider what I know, what I don’t know and what I need to learn to continue to build an environmentally considerate design studio,” said Tom Fereday.

The Cove lounge has been created from American red oak, the most abundant species in the American hardwood forest resource. His aim was to create a lounge that exposed the beauty of this natural material. The piece was made by Evostyle, a family-owned business who manufacture for a number of Australia’s most well-known designers, and who play a valuable role in working with designers in ensuring concepts are marketable when made.

“Often there is concern about using imported timbers given misconceptions about the impact of transport. In reality, transporting timber around the world has a negligible environmental impact. Wood is an effective carbon store, and such is the efficiency of the U.S. hardwood processing industry, and the fact that the lumber is shipped to Australia by sea, we can prove that the embodied carbon is significantly greater than that emitted during extraction, processing and transport,” said Roderick Wiles, AHEC Regional Director.