Pictured, a cardboard prototype for that chair. “Liquid wood was the material that we were hoping to use; it’s 100% biodegradable and doesn’t use any petroleum-based plastics,” Levien explains. “But it’s very brittle, so we ended up using a material which is 80% wood pulp and 20% polypropylene, which gives it structural stability. What’s interesting is when it’s molded under all that heat and pressure, the liquid wood takes on an uneven variegated pattern that looks like real wood — that’s the moisture escaping.”