Dutch designer Ineke Hans' Black Beauties collection, begun in 2000, was one of the first significant attempts to make cool, contemporary furniture for kids. The chairs, tables, and rocking toys are made out of heavy-duty, black, recycled plastic--which weighs a freakin' ton, holy smokes, you'd better know exactly where it goes on your freshly reinforced floor, because once the delivery guy puts it down, it ain't moving.
But that was then. As the detailed formula above demonstrates, by introducing her Fracture furniture for Cappellini--which is made by wrapping polyester plaster, such as you might find on your broken arm in the hospital, around polystyrene, such as you might find when you unpack your new flatscreen--Hans manages to bring the average weight of her designs in line with a normal piece of furniture [such as you might find on sale through March 24th--15% off!--at DT advertiser 10 Grain. For example.]
Fracture does not include actual kid-size furniture, mind you, though that 20cm low table is rather kiddish. Until it does, though, the obvious solution is to:
Your results may vary, but I'd be very interested to see how.
Update: A little searching turned up Mayday for Playday, the Nov. 2006 exhibition for which Hans showed the first versions of the superlightweight furniture she "intuitively created," now known as Fracture. The sponsor of that exhibition was 3M Nederlands, if that gives any clue as to which casting tape she started working with... designws has many more pictures of the show.
Ineke Hans Fracture Furniture for Cappellini [inekehans.com via mocoloco]
3M Scotchcast Plus casting tape comes in 10-packs of 4yd rolls, 2-5" wide, for about $3/sf [mooremedical.com]
Korean mfr Woosam Medical makes a fiberglass-free casting tape called Hygia Cast [ec21.com]
Techform fiberglass casting tape, meanwhile, has more colors [orthotape.com]
I like that the Korean fiberglass-free stuff is "easily disposed of by fire."
[d'oh missed that feature. -ed.]