objectcreatures

Design | Interiors | Objects

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Show time! After a week of manic work constructing a table and four chairs by myself in 2 days it all came together fairly well. Shown here are the leaflets that I designed and printed, the models my group made and the chairs that I made (and a photo of me looking as happy as a gravedigger).  

For this post however I would like to look at the table and chairs mainly as an extension of my last post devoted to my sketched designs. The chairs are modelled on the dimensions of bar stools (700mm tall x 400mm on the base) to match up with the table which is 1000mm tall. I chose this height because it would bring the models up to a height where people could pick them up while walking past and so visitors could squat down and see the models at eye level easily. Many of my coursemates loved this table height and a few even said that these would be good replacements for the existing studio furniture. 

The chairs are constructed from a central column of 44mmx44mm softwood that has been routed on the long sides to fit four plywood fins to stabilise the stool. The fins were cut from 400x670mm sheets of exterior ply using a fretsaw and to go along with our methodology we kept the negative cut outs as a design alternative which minimised waste. The fin shape was chosen because it indicated in a very minimalistic way that these were intended to be something to be sat on emulating the features of a traditional stool: feet, legs and a rounded top. The top of each chair has been constructed from plywood and plasterboard layered to form a durable surface. When in use the chair are very strong. The central column of softwood supports all who have sat on it over the course of the exhibition however there are some issues with flex in the plywood fins which could be resolved by using thicker material (I chose to use thin plywood and the 44mm square softwood to mimic materials that we found in the construction of interior walls at the exhibition space to make our exhibit true to life).

The table was made from a network of intersecting 44mm softwood joints covered in plasterboard for the top and the legs were made from old palettes with plasterboard on each side to mimic an interior wall that had been sliced in half to form this piece, as was our intention to do in reality. 

Overall the exhibit worked very well at presenting elements of our concept however I really wish that the final result could have been of a higher standard that reflected the concept but it was ultimately let down by members of my group being reluctant to go any further with the idea and a lack of time. On the flip side of that I feel that there are some elements of my own work that I would really like to take further such as the furniture designs.  

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Alongside the section and plans we decided to present, in our exhibition, a 1:1 replica of our proposal for furniture made from repurposed building materials. The designs shown here are solely my own sketches and designs. 

The top sketch shows a construction diagram for the framework of a table that I made for the space using square section timber, palettes and plasterboard. I made this using halving joints and plenty of 70x6mm woodscrews.

The next sketch (left) shows my initial ideas on how to go about producing chairs for the table; one looking at using sheet materials (plasterboard, hardboard, plywood, card) as a frame and the other looking at the idea of using plaster, derived from plasterboard, to make a cast seat top by using refuse to form the mould. We discovered that plaster is one of a few infinitely reusable materials where it can me heated at a low temperature, crushed and will return to a powdered state ready for casting. 

The final sketch (right) shown looks at the practicalities of using sheet material for a sofa (which was prototyped at 1:5 but never made at 1:1) where I examined ways of using plasterboard to its strengths to form a durable piece of furniture. Sheet material under lateral force often breaks but under a force of compression it’s breaking point will be reached at a much higher load. For the design i worked to this strength by angling the back so that when the user leaned back the force would act along the plasterboard to compress. 

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After our pitch to bruntwood I started on drawing up plans and sections for the building. As shown here I decided that a good use of space would be to have bikes stacked vertically to give better access and more efficient storage, showers to the rear of the bike storage in order to give cyclists somewhere to wash after a long journey to the office and to give the event space an area for socialising/meetings that everyone would have access to and a private function room.

All of the spaces and furniture were intended to have resused elements at their core. In this scheme I chose to use the ceiling grid and tiles for the room divider in the event space and to use the plasterboard from the walls for the furniture but more on that in a later post.

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A photoset from our presentation to the client (which was very well received) showing our material testing, our concept and ideas.

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After deciding on our methodology we went on to prototyping through material experimentation. Our main concern with using repurposed refuse was how we could make furniture and finishes with high quality results through testing, photography and illustration

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After we got our starting point from looking at the problems of the interior architecture in the previous post we realised that problem solving was something that every business in Blackfriars House exists to do and it is what inspires acts of creativity.

What this series of sketches above is attempting to illustrate is that an aesthetic (demonstrated by the chair) does not make someone creative despite businesses attempting to make creative spaces through room colour, lighting, branding etc. People are only creative when they are faced with a problem (the crocodile as a problematic and dangerous chair). Therefor what we wanted to do with our design scheme was to inspire these acts of creativity through showing how problems have been solved in interesting ways. 

People solve problems in various ways. There is not necessarily ever one way of reaching a solution to a problem. People employ their own methodologies which help them solve problems; for a wall to be taken down an unstable person may simply take a sledge hammer to the structure and make a chaotic opening with rough edges and an irregular shape. For us we wanted to approach the problems in an environmentally conscious way by employing existing materials within the structure to solve the problems.

An area of environmental design and recycling that is often ignored is how something can be recycled more than once without wasting the materials or adding more materials, It is important given the consumption of power and natural resources that the design community starts looking at true zero waste recycling and reuse. So we decided that we would try to solve this problem when applicable to renovation of buildings by using wall coverings, ceiling tiles and rubble from walls to populate the space with furniture made form these existing resources rather than stripping the space which would part the building from its past. 

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Carrying on from the last post on my unit X this is the next design step that our project underwent. We really needed a starting point from which to gain traction with a concept and form a methodology specific to this building and space so we attempted to address the problem of the foot flow through the space.

To get this starting point we looked at the ways people pass through the space. The existing footflow (right) seemed really unnecessarily complicated and the interior architecture divided the space making it feel like a badly converted office serving as an anonymous utility space. We came up with an alternative scheme through planning and model making (left) which would allow much better passage through the space with a very spacious and light central corridor between the bike shed/loading bay to the main reception. However after looking at the original archived plans (top) we realised we could not do this, since load bearing walls would have to be knocked down, but our analysis gave us exactly what we needed: a good starting point. This is something that I will expand upon in the next post of the series.

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To go more in depth into this years Unit X (now it’s finally over) today im going to be posting image sets which show each step of the process. This first image set is from our site visit investigating the space that we could work with; the photos shown here have been taken within the red rectangle on the plan image. 

We decided to design for this part of the building (bike shed and event space) because we realised we could make the most significant difference with the smallest changes such as taking down dividing walls to improve wayfinding but more on that in a later photoset.

(logo and plan provided by bruntwood - i do not own any rights to either image)

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Mid way through the In Detail project I decided that I should really think about making my own website to trying to get work experience and just for general employability.

My concept was based around the idea of creating a website that communicated what I do as an interior designer and I realised that everyone has an idea in their head of what an interior designer does and what an interior design website should look like. Needless to say most of these ideas are slightly off so I wanted to make a site that challenged that by showcasing only the things that I make and let people decide what I do because in truth I love doing a great variety of tasks in design. 

Shown here are several stages in the process of the production of my website up to now (where I’m just about ready to create some content and get photographing and coding). The first images show my initial sketches for the rotating box which will contain my architectural models and plans. On a user click the box will rotate to the next page item. The final Images show where I am up to now with some blocked out UI.

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As mentioned in my In Detail posts I did a lot of character sketches for the project. These really helped me with creating ideas and for me now these creatures metaphorically now play a big part in my design process. They are also a big part of the reason for the name of my blog; these are the original object creatures. At first the term was a simple descriptor but through looking into the words I realised that these things that I imagined took on human characteristics which led me to the concept of humans as object creatures. We consume design and are so involved lovingly with the objects we surround ourselves with in our homes that we are the object creatures except we depend on ‘stuff’ like a drug whereas my scribblings were born of the things I knew by shape, form and function. So my blog name, to me at least, relates to who I design for and why I design.

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In Detail Project Part 2

To recap in part 1 I explained the brief for this project and detailed my initial thoughts and experiments. If you would like to see the rest of the project click on the hashtag In Detail at the bottom of this post.

Leading on from my material experiments with the idea of water collectors and containers I expanded my philosophy, based on making people more aware of resource consumption, to tackle usage of heating. My concept was for a chair with inflatable sides that would inflate and hug the user when heating in the form of hot air was passed into it with the chair acting like an inflating radiator. Not only would this make heating more efficient for reducing the amount of space that needed to be heated but it would also give good visual representation to the consumption of a resource that people rarely consciously aware of.

I tested this idea out by making a 1:10 scale mdf chair frame, covering it with latex coated stretch fabric and inflating with a piece of pond pipe. One of the main considerations with the design was to make it similar to my original drawn concepts for the creatures but I think my tutor rightly pointed out that the wingback design was a bit similar to some chairs populating the foyer of the university. The stretch material was really challenging to make but I found that M and S t-shirt material covered with three layers of latex and sewn together in a chair shaped jacket worked very well.

By this point it was getting close to the final presentation in the unit and I did not have any more time to develop my ideas and in the end my plans got a bit rushed; things also did not get finished necessarily to the standard I wanted. However despite all of this I got a very high grade getting a first for the project and I learned a lot of new methods of presenting work along with a new approach to thinking which was down in part to the Narrative lectures that i attended. 

Shown below is a sketchup concept for the apartment, it’s not very polished but if anyone was particularly curious about what the space was intended to look like this is it from an interior view with some furniture in place. 

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In Detail Project Part 1

Along with the lecture notes that I have posted I’ve been wanting to post this for some time because it is one of the projects that I am most proud of because it really allowed me to explore ideas and themes that I was interested in. I had the opportunity to weld, design furniture and improve my illustration skills. 

a new space: 

You have the chance to design your own living space, the space is where you will live, sleep, work, eat and socialise. The room is no more than 36m2 and has the height of 2.4m.

The space has one window and is in an apartment development. You are in the city of your choice but the city is not in the UK. You are in this new city because you are starting a new job in a nearby design studio. You work in the studio 3 days a week and the rest of the time you work from your own space. There is nothing in the space other than mains electricity, gas and water.

The water is on for only half an hour a day but at the same time each day, there might be other factors that may need to be resolved as the project progresses.

For my project I chose the city of Aarhus in Denmark because I had always wanted to travel to Denmark and through research I felt that the city was the perfect place for me to live because of its cultural scene and location.

Image source: www.visitaarhus.com

My concept was based around the idea of water conservation outlined in the brief. I decided at the outset the only usable way to deal with the half hour of water each day would be to store it and develop systems that indicated water levels. The system I decided upon was based around the idea of a leaky roof where the frequency of water droplets hitting the floor and making a sound indicate the amount of rain outside. 

I went on to look at how the rain droplets could be used to inform the overall design of the building so I looked at narratives associated with raindrops. Where do we hear raindrops? underneath an umbrella, in an old building, in a cave? Eventually this evolved into the idea of caves and cave creatures with their own personalities. 

Returning to the idea of raindrops I decided a good way to make this work as a dynamic in the space would be to have metal water collection trays instead of taps. I made several prototypes of this idea in the workshops including a welded 1:1 scale tray (which now is in use as a fantastic magazine rack) and a lot of 1:5 scale experiments in vac formed polystyrene and 3mm diameter brass rods.

more in part 2..

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Contextualising Practice Lecture Notes #5 : The Subliminal Accident

The title relates more to the philosophy behind the need for this lecture rather than the lecture itself. This lecture looked at the idea that the act of drawing can add a lot to design over using a computer - happy accidents and increased freedom. If you would like to see all the notes from these lectures click on the hashtag fundamentals at the bottom of the post.

My tutor who gave this lecture, Simone Ridyard is a very skilled urban sketcher and architect and has worked for Disney in the past undertaking illustration work. The lecture looked at the creation habits of successful architects such as Norman Foster, Robert Venturi and Le Corbusier examining the advantages of hand drawing.

I’d say what this lecture really helped me with most was opening my eyes to methods of presentation through drawing. As a kid I had always loved mid century graphic design because my dad had been a graphic designer of sorts in the 80′s before computers were used commonly for design and much of his work involved doing things by hand. I used to crawl through his books on how to use airbrushes, colour pencils and markers to do ‘photoreal’ renderings of products and in my free time now I always like to try these manual methods of rendering and layout presentation.

‘architectural drawing can be divided into three types, which I call the “referential sketch,” the “preparatory study,” and the “definitive drawing” ‘

- Graves, Michael, 2012, Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing; article New York Times

The lecture looked at ways that had drawing and drafting can be used in these three ways. The referential sketch takes the place of initial ideas. The advantage that hand drawing has over writing out ideas at that stage is that drawings can often communicate ideas better and quicker which is really helpful when sifting through pages and pages in notebooks deciding here to go next. Used as an example were Le Corbusier’s sketches communicating ideas of urban planning. As someone who is more interested in micro interiors than macro environments I find that ideas on city planning go over my head but these sketches illustrated how effective referential sketches can be because I immediately understood the concept that was being communicated.

This whole lecture got me thinking about this communication and after this point I stopped trying to do everything on the computer because ultimately even though I could make accurate digital models quickly it was very hard to make visuals with them that communicated what I wanted. Also I couldn’t indulge my own interest for doing things like rendering by hand and learn the skills I wanted to. Now for every project I am trying to do finished visuals and sketches solely by hand, pencil point and brush. So far it has worked quite well and I think this lecture was a bit of a turning point for me where it made me think about who i wanted to be.

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Contextualising Practice Lecture Notes #4 : Thresholds

Thresholds. This lecture was the fourth in the fundamentals series looking at the boundaries between spaces, how spaces are defined and how we enter and leave spaces.. If you would like to see all the notes from these lectures click on the hashtag fundamentals at the bottom of the post.

This lecture was very interesting for me because it was the first time we discussed architectural theory based interpretations of space. The lecture looked at the work of Ron GIlad (Home Sweet House), Simon Unwin, Tadao Ando, Marina Abramovic and a selection of Installations at the 2014 Venice Biennale.

“ The doorway is one of the most powerful instruments available to the architect. It is even richer in its powers than the wall, upon which it almost always depends. Where the power of the wall is to deny (to keep things apart), that of the doorway is to permit (to allow passage). And permission usually has more dimensions of possibility - risks as well as reward - than denial” 

(Unwin, 2007)

The lecture focussed a lot on this type of idea: risk and reward; light and dark; contrast. One the best examples of this contrast is the Rabbit Hole in Alice in Wonderland that the presentation opened with or equally the twister in The Wizard of Oz where the world is plunged from black and white into technicolour. As well as a phenomenological experience of how we feel based on light and sensory input one of the things that really interested me in the lecture was the idea of subliminal semiotics of architecture. For example in any Sci-Fi film architectural semiotics are easy to observe. We understand that it is fatal to be outside a spaceship so the hull/walls are the only thing that protects us and carry great symbolism in that. We rarely observe this in day to day life because the environments we inhabit have far less danger than in these films.

Another element that the lecture focussed on was the geometry of doors and how we feel passing through shaped openings. Marina Abramovic carried out what could be called an experiment in 1977 called Imponderable where her and her partner stood disrobed in a doorway in an art gallery. The experiment was videoed and the reactions by the public were quite amusing while trying to pass through. Throughout the lectures I have attended at MMU, the tutorials and seminars I’ve always come across things that challenged perceptions of what things are meant to be and this lecture typified that. I came away really enthusiastic with a view to learning more about basic architectural theories and as of now I’m still learning and enthused with the idea to learn more about this element of Interiors.

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A Throwback to Before I Started University

I had a gap year in between sixth form and university but instead of travelling the world or vlogging my life for a year I decided to enrol at Shillington College which is for people who have graduated from art school and want to do graphic design but are lacking in technical skills. Going to that place really helped me. The experience made me grow up so so much from the shy 18 year old I was into a more confident person who knew what to do professionally as a designer.

Shown above are some of my favourite pieces of work from that year on a project making a poster and cinema ticket for a fictitious Bfi festival celebrating Sci-fi. The idea behind the poster and ticket was of cinema coming alive and i think it worked incredibly well for an 18 year old having just come out of compulsory education.

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Contextualising Practice Lecture Notes #3 : Soundscapes

Carrying on from Atmospheres the next fundamentals subject was soundscapes. If you would like to see all the notes from these lectures click on the hashtag fundamentals at the bottom of the post.

This lecture was really interesting for me because i’ve never been that interested in the impact of noises, music and sound on design mainly because my hearing has never been finely tuned to the point at which I could pursue many audio based interests beyond being a consumer. In the presentation we were shown several projects by designers and artist by the names of RVTR, Bill Fonatana, Troika and Nigel Stanford. All of which really opened up my eyes to what could be achieved through sound.

To start the lecture off it was highlighted how much print culture fostered sight becoming the prime sense though which we interpret the world because the role of news and information being passed on through word of mouth had diminished. One thing that made me question why we prefer vision of sound is the amount of colours we see and sound we hear from a scientific standpoint. We see light with a range of wavelengths thats is far far less than audible sound, furthermore we only see infront of us but our hearing is 360 degrees all around us. However because of the entrenchment of print culture and visual culture in our lives sadly the semiotics we understand are locked in to visual cues with very few audible symbols in comparison.

Much like in the atmospheres project something that I felt was quite interesting was how materials had certain sounds. It opened up the idea too of using sound design as a lens through which design - to use form to create certain noise conditions which are more or less preferable. It might not be my chosen methodology for interiors now but it’s useful to always consider something like this as a base upon which to build ideas and concepts of form. The design group RVTR used robotics to change the shape of a ceiling made from small triangular tiles to influence the acoustics of a music hall. Not only did this produce an improved and flexible sound environment but it too produced a beautiful event of seeing all of the tiles move like a breeze blowing through leaves. 

In a similar way to materials creating noise the lecture touched on sound machines which produced either randomly generated sounds from everyday events or collected sounds and exhibited them as installations. Many were inspired by the world war sound dishes which were used on the British coastline to listen for incoming enemy aircraft. Others used events such as road noise pollution to base these sound machines around. Maybe if visual culture had never been so dominant society might be more open to some modern artworks which go understood because the process is the art but not the final result. Maybe if art was audible we would feel a greater understanding for the processes and appreciate this type of art more.

The lecture ended with something that resembled an instrumental inspirational montage like the karate kid waxing on and off to a static electricity generator with a lot of microphones surrounding him. It’s safe to say I came away from that lecture quite motivated but I have yet to experiment in depth with this within interiors.