Culpra Furniture is a social enterprise crafting furniture from salvaged surplus red gum timber found on the abandoned Culpra Station located on the Murray River between Mildura and Robinvale, New South Wales. The project is a collaboration between the Aboriginal land management organisation Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation (CMCA) and OFFICE.

Culpra Furniture combines traditional Aboriginal weaving, artwork and collaboratively designed furniture pieces, each exploring the application of circular economic practices in caring for Country through design. The range of furniture is produced on site at the Culpra Station, under the direct management of the CMCA. The site, comprising 8,500 hectares of spectacular riverine forest, was once the home of settler-led extractive forestry practices, with the CMCA’s vision for the site pushing back against years of damage through the reappropriation of the mill's historical timber refuse, among other vital initiatives.

The furnitures’ production and design celebrates ecological, cultural and environmental values through both the sustainable, upcycled material choice and the furniture’s fabrication, with the simplicity of the design allowing for the training of currently unskilled practitioners during the pieces’ production. The furniture emphasises how design can provide both a vehicle for environmental action and education, promoting the care of Country and fostering relationships between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The furniture celebrates the role First Nations community can play in informing and transforming material practices in Australian design, celebrating notions of both community and care.

This text was the result of online research borrowing from OFFICE’s description of the project via their website and the Australian Design Centers review of the work.