If the polar bear has been cast as the poster child for global warming in its role as innocent victim, the mountain pine beetle is playing the opposite lead as the opportunistic villain. It's poster would read: Most Unwanted.

Once kept in check by months of minus 40 degree Canadian winter, the warmer temperatures have allowed the insect pest's population to explode and munch its way through miles of BC forests, leaving millions of destroyed (mostly longpole) pine trees in its wake.

The result is acres of deadwood that not only blights the natural beauty of the landscape but also renders a valuable natural resource useless for harvest.  Or at least, useless for the purpose of commercial industry.

In the classic making lemonade out of lemons scenario, the damaged wood - which turns blue when infected by the grosmannia clavigera fungus that hitchhikes in on the beetle -- has been finding its way into the hands of craftspeople and artisan carpenters, who use it to make beautiful sculptures and decorative furnishings. A good example of this unlikely bonus can be seen in a project that was commissioned exclusively for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games.

Heeding VANOC's call to make the Vancouver Olympics the "greenest" in modern history, Far Coast (Coca-Cola's new coffee brand, and an official Olympic Games sponsor), challenged six teams of students at the Emily Carr University of Art & Design to brainstorm ideas for several pieces of patio-style furniture that could be made from the "blue pine" and put to use in Olympic venues.

The students responded with an asymmetrical modular design that not only invited sociability and playfulness through its pattern elements, but also allowed for a variety of arrangements. When the final selection was chosen, the chairs and tables were assembled by the Centre for Advanced Wood Processing at the University of British Columbia and then set up for use in the Athletes Village, as well as the Media Centre.

You can see more photos of the furniture at the Emily Carr website here.
And a video showing the design and construction teams at work, posted on the Far Coast website here.