Photos: 'Green' furniture cut out from cardboard

The newest cardboard furniture designs are built to disguise the humble nature of their core material.

However, FedExFurniture.com probably offers the most notorious display of cardboard furnishings. Low on cash in 2005, software developer Jose Avila used FedEx shipping boxes to furnish his apartment in Tempe, Ariz., then uploaded photos to the Web.

However, FedEx tried to shut down his Web site, claiming it violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Avila's ISP shut down his site, but after fits and starts, it's been back up for at least four months.

"It's OK to be ghetto!" the site says.

On the other hand, serious cardboard furniture makers have suggested that their designs would be ideal for sharing online. That's because shipping expensive, finished pieces makes less sense than simply relying upon local workshops.

However, no open-source, Web-based design database appears to exist for cardboard furniture, such as the one created for buildings by the nonprofit Architecture for Humanity.