Stylish flat pack furniture - how this home design staple has suddenly got cool

Flat pack furniture with its short term reputation, gets a bad rap, particularly now the importance of sustainability and longevity is at the fore. Yet that doesn't mean that fans of modern interior design need to ditch clean lines and simplicity for fusty antiques or spend a fortune on designer furniture (even if it is likely to hold its value). There is an alternative - and FUZL Studio is providing it.

Founded by Oliver Theobold, FUZL Studio offers stylish, well-made, self-assembly furniture, using 100% sustainably-sourced materials, made solely in the UK by expert craftspeople. 

When it comes to assembling the FUZL Studio flat pack furniture, there's no tools, no glue, no fuss, just durable, contemporary designs for the home that can be put together and dismantled in a matter of minutes - and at the end of its long life, it's fully recyclable.

FUZL Original modern furniture designs are the first pieces in the UK to incorporate QIK-Clips™ - a strong steel fixing device, used originally in the commercial packaging industry, meaning no tools are needed to build any designs. 

The pieces are available in six colour finishes using natural VOC free food safe oils and pigments, including red, green, yellow and black:  

Necessity is the mother of invention and that's what happened with FUZL Studio's founder Oliver Theobald. "A few years ago, I moved into an apartment in London and I found it virtually impossible to source well-crafted, self-assembly furniture for smaller spaces," he says. 

"I had a decent budget but I found many brands equated small spaces with being at the cheaper, lower quality end of the market. Along with that, many of the designs I tried were needlessly complicated and time-consuming to build, made using unsustainable production methods and fast materials that favoured aesthetics over longevity."

Theobald canvassed opinion amongst his friends and discovered he wasn't alone, with many perceiving flat pack furniture as short-lived and ultimately destined for landfill, rather than being cherished and moved from home to home.

He saw an opportunity to re-imagine self-assembly design - using expert craftsmanship and sustainable materials to create desirable modern furniture - simple to build (thanks to clever engineering) and designed to be easily repaired rather than replaced.

"Sustainable design is a term that's thrown around a lot at the moment within interiors, and it's a topic we are passionate about" says Theobald. "As design engineers we have a responsibility to reduce our environmental impact where we can."

"We've kept our designs 'tool free', so no more of those plastic bags with fixings, or synthetic glues and varnishes. We've also developed recyclable packaging, so there's no bubble-wrap or plastics when it arrives." 

FUZL Studio was established after a successful crowd-funding campaign, and has launched its first furniture collection consisting modular storage: cabinets and shelving, tables, benches and chairs.

Made from birch plywood, a strong, durable and sustainable timber, the pieces are crafted in FUZL Studio's workshop in Nottingham and are 'made to order' and available online.

For those keen to see the furniture 'in the flesh', FUZL Studio will also be opening its first showroom, within Folk's flagship store at Coal Drops Yard, Kings Cross, London, N1C, in Spring 2021.