Furniture and woodworking has long been a passion of mine. Since early shop-classes in grade school through my college and subsequent professional career, if I haven't had the opportunity to develop concepts for clients, I'm creating them for myself.
My College career saw me develop furniture concepts for two separate classes.
The first in 2005 was in Fiorelli's foundation design studies class where the furniture piece and the human body have be integrated, and function as a system. I chose to create a set of nesting stools crafted from hundreds of layers of laminated wood plies sandwiched together. They're precision cut to maintain a precision constant gap between each stool when nestled.
With the stools placed in a quadrant orientation the participants seated upon them. After being instructed to lean back onto the legs of the person behind them, the stools were then removed, completing the human-furniture dependance where the stools are no longer the support structure, the people themselves are.
As part of a "Product Family" project in my first year of ID, I wanted to further explore furniture design by developing 3 products that used the same technologies and design language. These products were a shelving system, a bed, and a coffee table.
The shelves were a continuation of the construction process I used for the stools, with the concept being that when this product existed in the market, say 2020 it would also live in a time where cellphones and electronic personal devices all charged wirelessly through induction charging (this was 2006, btw).
Built into the top surface lies a non-slip silicone charging pad to grip and hold a pile of chargeables pulled from your pocked and dumped onto it, leaving you to not have to worry about plugging in all those pesky devices individually so they'll be waiting ready to go when you leave. layered into the wood construction was a 5cm thick layer of frosted bulletproof acrylic that I installed LED lighting into in order to create ambient lighting, as well as visually display information such as charging levels.
Going with my tendency to design solutions for myself with the hope they have traction in the real-world, I developed the Modern Man Bed.
At the time I was a sleepless, stress-filled design student spending days (and nights) in the studio, and working either in an art store or later a design internship. So when I finally did get home, I'd often just fall into bed, kick off my pants to the foot, and go to sleep. The next morning I'd wake, put on my pants, and start all over again only to find my phone had died overnight. So, similar to the shelving, it incorporates a technology 'trough' with integrated charging at the foot so that all your devices could charge wirelessly within your pockets for the next day.
The other goal was to create an affordable product with modern design that at the end of it's product lifecycle could easily be recycled. The entirety of it's construction is made from B-ply cardboard, layered and bonded with eco-responsible resins. The edges are exposed so-as to celebrate it's construction, while the tops surfaces are made durable, elevated through the use of thin wood veneers to minimize wood waste.
The Coffee Table concept morphs both Bed and Shelf by combining the suspended shelving with the B-ply cardboard construction used in the bed to make an simple modern living-space centerpiece.
Fast Forward to 2013, I thought to make two seating concepts, one for public spaces that took an elevated aesthetic into the urban or park landscape.
The other direction was for personal, interior spaces. A high-end focused piece intended for lounges, lobbies, entry ways, and living rooms you're not mean't to sit long in. Heavily inspired by Marcel Brurer's 1925 Wassily chair, it incorporates padded, stitched leather to a welded stainless steel frame.
Intended for Hotels and modern interior/exterior spaces. These trash can concepts are simple in their construction through the use of simple sheet-cut forms.