Kids like to make messes. If given the chance, they’d paint all over your furniture, and maybe slap some stickers on there too. This is not, in most cases, acceptable. But it is if you have cardboard ...

When Karthic Rathinam — then a third-year product design student in Pune — moved out of his hostel into an unfurnished studio apartment, he decided to build his own furniture. “I experimented with ...