Camada Daybed
The prototype Camada daybed designed by Ash Fischer and Orlando Hayes proved that furniture made with 100% recycled plastic and upholstered in Australian wool can be beautiful, eminently collectable and valuable. A big question put to the pair during the six-month Carl Nielsen Design Accelerator program was whether they wanted to continue as designer/makers or explore a new path to commercial success. Fischer and Hayes share their big realisations in this interview recorded by Powerhouse editor Stuart Ridley just before they presented the daybed at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York in May 2024.
‘Changing from a designer/maker just to being a designer was probably one of the biggest decisions.’
Ash Fischer Our main goal was to establish a refined product everyone’s happy with and I think that’s stayed true. This industry is pretty hard to get your foot in the door unless you have some sort of some financial backing, so getting funding behind a project helps a tonne. And having access to Adam Goodrum as the program mentor has been incredibly valuable, along with help from people at Powerhouse like Angelique Hutchison (Collection Curatorial), Tane Andrews (Exhibitions) and Tashi Grey (Program Curatorial).
I remember studying Adam Goodrum at uni and then having meetings with him every fortnight for this project was pretty surreal. Going through the program we realised how not ready the first prototype was and how far away we were from reaching a market that can purchase a daybed of this value. So it definitely changed from thinking we knew what to do to really quickly realising we had no idea.
