Yuya Ushida at MAD is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

Designer and engineer Yuya Ushida “unfurls” his “SOFA_XXXX”, which isn’t X-rated, but gets its name from the X joints that give it both structure and expandability. (Click on the image to see a video of its laborious production, and then its fascinating use.) I saw the piece in the “Against the Grain” show at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, where a wall text explained that its first prototype was made from about 8,000 recycled bamboo chopsticks – China alone throws out about 90 billion of them each year – which were hand-drilled by Ushida as a student project for the design academy in Eindhoven. It seems that the versions of XXXX going into mass production may be made from plastic, and so won’t be as “green”. Maybe the trick would be to publish DIY plans for sofas to be made by anyone who eats lots (and lots) of take-out Chinese.

For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.