Photo by Bryce Barry.

Many of you know our brand and furniture already.  But go behind the scenes and you'll find a lesser known part of our business not often communicated.  For eight years now, the Autonomous Furniture crew have honed our social and environmental practices to better strengthen our neighborhood contributions and decrease our impact on the environment.

Our furniture’s origins are rooted by the forests of beautiful British Columbia, we take great care in nurturing the environment in all aspects of our furniture design and manufacturing. First, we source as close to home as possible, starting on Vancouver Island, and expanding to Pacific Northwest with an eye for local distribution. We research and vet all wood suppliers for sustainable forest management and best practices.

Only natural oil and wax finishes are used on Autonomous pieces, comprised of renewable raw materials, ensuring its safe for humans, animals, and plants, and healthier for our craftsmen applying it.

Our sheet goods, such as acrylic and matte black composite material (made of 65% recycled paper) are optimized to ensure almost zero waste. An extensive recycling and waste program within our shop results in as little as one garbage bag per week. Our ‘Material Bank’ program offers Interior Designers free wood for use in mood boards.

Shop photos by Bright Photography.

Circular Economy for Furniture

At Autonomous, we strive to design and manufacture furniture to benefit the circular economy. Our natural materials and finishes, limited use of adhesives, as well as furniture designed for easy repair, and the potential to return to us to reform a furniture piece to another. Our packaging materials are collected from large manufacturers that would otherwise be discarded and are upcycled for local deliveries before being used to ship to other cities.

The goal is to pass Autonomous Furniture pieces down through generations, rather than discarding to a landfill, with an ability to maintain its pristine condition.

Coming Soon ... Autonomous Furniture Registry

Part of what we offer in our furniture is bespoke customization, and the ability to re-purpose and re-use.  Consumers are moving away from consumption of standardized mass produced products.  All our designs can be tailored, this is what we call customized.  The goal is for the piece to fit perfectly into your lives eliminating the desire for change.  However if change is needed, we have also designed the pieces to re-purpose.  As an example, turning an acrylic console into a bench, easily changing the colour, or refreshing the piece before moving to another family member.  And re-use - we are working on a registry program for all our clients.  Because situations change, and we want your piece to go to someone else to enjoy for years to come.  Soon, our clients will have the opportunity to sell their pieces on our Autonomous Furniture Registry site.  Certain pieces such as our Freeman bench, are very difficult to make and time consuming.  There is often a waiting list for such pieces.  Someone else might be the perfect recipient. 

In the end, we pledge to put as much of our revenue back into the local economy as possible.  Wood purchases from a local family-owned sawmill, our street person window cleaner, or the local roaster supplying us with copious amounts of coffee on a daily basis.

We are honoured to be recognized as Western Living magazine's One to Watch in their annual Designer of the Year awards! 

Read the article here.

A sincere thank you to Western Living for the recognition, and to the panel of internationally renowned judges. This means so much to each of us at Autonomous!

As design aficionados, we're thrilled when good design makes its way into every aspect of daily life ... and honoured to have Autonomous featured as 'one to watch' in Western Living's summer issue. We've been busy these last few months building some very stunning tables for Victoria's newest pasta bar, Lot 1, and striking tables and countertops for the newest and hottest (hint!!) location of our favourite coffee shop.

(Photo: Lillie Louise Major.)

All this 'head in the details' work can make us lose sight of our goal - to design and build beautiful contemporary furniture - for both your home and favourite commercial spaces. So hearing that we've been shortlisted as a finalist for Western Living's Furniture Designer of the Year award made us step back and take a look at what we've been delivering this year and are excited to launch our latest at this year's IDS Vancouver show.

That's right, we're coming to Vancouver this Fall when we attend the IDS Vancouver show, and we can't wait! This show is expected to be an amazing who's who of design, including guest appearance by Tom Dixon. We have some exciting new pieces to debut, so stay tuned.