The Design Stage

Whereby my intentions were subverted for the better. I know that there are a multitude of ways to come up with a design but I started sketching and drawing from precedents such as ‘Le Corbusier Furniture and Interiors 1905–1965’. A friend also told me to look at Milo Baughman where I was interested by the angles of the chairs.

I went to Great Dane and Interiors Living to have a look at joints under tables and different designs.
This taught me about different ways to consider joining two pieces of timber, whether to keep it continuous and that the best designs are usually the most simple.

I started looking at shape, texture, grain, pattern, colour... lots of things to take into account.
Grain was something that I really didn’t consider enough, I didn’t realise the extent to which the direction of the grain affected cutting, splintering, texture, look, feel, sanding.

I started modelling in balsa to see what would work and what didn’t. I started to want to design the most complicated, awe inspiring ambitious tables that wouldn’t work or come together. Strangely all very low to the ground. The most interesting idea, for me, was when I started thinking about how to make a table, fold out from a rectangle with one continuous surface, that could pack back up again into a flat piece.
I would definitely keep it simpler next time in the design phase and use the materiality with it’s limitations and beauty as the driver of the design / potentially even fore fronting the grain in the design. 
This has definitely opened my mind to the possibility of pallet furniture. So often these days we see pallets used in design, in restaurants, cafes to give this kind of ‘effortless’ cheap, locally produced vibe but in reality it’s this effortless look which indicates, to me, a lack of substance and need be ‘on trend’ the beauty of craftsmanship with this material is much more intriguing to me.

The bottom two designs were very low but going with the idea of canterlevering and a ‘floating’ table top. The above image on the right, playing with the idea of a designing a side table, something that we could use in our house. It’s interesting to think of design as starting from a need, a table for keys, letters near the front of the house would be a beautiful addition.