Furniture as Prefabricator

Though much attention has been centered on the prefabrication of architecture there has been virtually no pointed discussion on the influence and importance of prefabrication within the interior environment. A review of the literature revealed that whereas a paucity of explicit research has focused on this subject, there is however an abundance of evidence regarding the prefabrication of the interior environment dating back thousands of years and most significantly from the late nineteenth century to the present. As such, the historical topic of prefabricated interior design does, in fact, exist and merits directed exploration. This article defines the topic and develops the historical context of prefabricated interior design with the critical discussion addressing its development from the late nineteenth century to the present. In the prefabrication of the interior, one can look to distinct elements or prefabricated wholes.

2010

2006

This dissertation is concerned with opportunities and challenges for design arising in the context of technological possibilities with a focus on new materials and production techniques. The main goal has been to provide a better understanding of combinations of design and technological aspects. As a consequence, the aim is to support the design process so that it can lead designers towards becoming more skilled in making use of these possibilities early in their activities. The investigation has been carried out in the field of furniture in which new materials and production techniques are considered as an integral element throughout the design process and which develops design solutions that are adapted to these possibilities. The research project is based on the idea that nowadays, technologies suggest the use of new materials with improved properties and shaping techniques which can constantly expand the range of possible solutions. They offer an enormous potential to think abou...

2008

Even though prefabrication has been around for centuries, the rising cost of labor and materials and increased environmental sensitivity has brought prefabrication back to the eyes of the public and has created a renewed push within the housing and design industries for prefabrication. The terminal project-level studio I taught in Spring 2008 grappled with the idea of prefabricated dwellings as a research design topic and created an amazing variety of work this paper will illustrate and discuss. The studio began with a review of the history of prefabrication, dating back to the 1600s, where modular homes were shipped in pieces to be rebuilt by the first settlers upon reaching America, and up through Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion home and Lustron home by Carl Strandlund. The students also looked at contemporary case studies, such as the weeHouse by Alchemy Architects and the Drop house designed by architects Antoine Cordier, Olivier Charles and Armel Neouze. New technologies were also researched to support their designs, from off-the-grid systems to the CNC fabricated work of William Massie. From this research the students designed a program or matrix using the answers to the following questions to guide their designs: who is the dwelling for: second homes, disaster relief victims, a single family, multiple families? How will this be delivered, flat box or modular? What level of permanence: temporary, semipermanent, permanent? Is this a modular or component driven project, or both? This matrix and the students' own creativity created a wide variety of work. The projects to be discussed in this paper will be as follows: the ellipse home designed down to the built-ins that plug into the home's structural system; a modular disaster relief unit designed to create a sense of community, and the ability to be reused as building blocks for homes; and a new CMU block system for a downtrodden village in Tanzania which is designed to be plugged together and dry stacked by uneducated laborers to build their own shelters. This paper will discuss these projects and the process used to teach the studio.

This article examines the integration of prefabrication into an interior design studio. A review of the literature revealed that while there is a paucity of categorical research focused on this subject, the subject is historically significant with an abundance of evidence regarding the prefabrication of the interior environment dating back thousands of years. The studio began with a research report, which uncovered a lack of specific topical historical evidence correlating prefabrication with interior design. Next, a series of lectures defined the topic ‘Prefabricated Interior Design’ and introduced sustainable strategies in prefabrication. Finally, students were instructed to create and assemble three separate prefabricated design studies. At the end of the instructional semester students were questioned about their education, attitudes, and professional objectives toward Prefabricated Interior Design. The survey uncovered that students feel Prefabricated Interior Design is ‘unrepresented’ in historical content and professional practice. The survey also revealed that students' initial awareness of prefabrication in interior design is weak, however, with the implementation of the topic into a studio-based course their attitudes and perceptions toward prefabrication heightened.

Though much attention has been given to the architecture of the prefabricated house, little has been devoted to the discussion of the prefabricated interior environment. Many discussions have centered on the notion of the house as a "machine for living," but it is the kitchen, a room that epitomizes the profession of interior design, that stakes the greatest claim to such automation. The prefabrication of the kitchen arose from the ever-present desire to attain effi ciency and accommodate individual user needs, requirements, and preferences. Driven by the need for effi ciency and within the context of continued industrialized inventionincluding every conceivable element for making the processing of food easier, such as, for example, computerization-the kitchen historically has served as an ideal laboratory for the investigation into interior prefabrication.

The dwellings in old city centres are usually smaller than those found in new residential areas. The usual approach to make old dwellings meet current space standards is to change their spatial configuration. These changes demand building works that are expensive and not always technically feasible. Instead, we propose to increase the efficiency of domestic space use through furniture that allows multiple (e.g., cooking, dining and living at the same time) or successive (e.g., living during the day and sleeping during the night) uses of domestic spaces. This option is cheap and fully reversible, being therefore more sustainable. The paper presents a survey of furniture used to ensure the flexible use of dwellings. It focus on furniture used for sleeping, dining and living. Three research questions are addressed: What conceptual approaches can be used to design furniture that enables a flexible use of space? Which operational strategies are more frequently used to design these pieces of furniture? Are these pieces of furniture mass produced or prototypes? The following tasks were carried out: i) set the selection criteria, ii) make an object data sheet, iii) gather and classify data, and iv) analyse results. The criteria to build the sample of furniture was the variety of type of objects (e.g., bed, table, cabinet, sofa), the diversity of strategies used to ensure flexibility (e.g., swivel, telescopic, assemble) and the innovation or relevance in furniture design evolution. For the analysis, each piece of furniture was classified in a table according to the object type, the dwelling function and the strategy to ensure flexibility. The classifications obtained for all items in the sample were summed up to draw conclusions. The results are that the pieces of furniture more frequently used to ensure flexibility are room dividers for sleeping privacy, expandable/collapsible dining tables for dining, and container expanding systems for living. Multifunctional objects that maximize the use of space were found for the three functions. The strategies that are applied more frequently to promote furniture flexibility are hinging, telescopic and assembling. These strategies are applied in pieces of furniture that have robust structures and are made of long lasting materials. In contrast, the least used strategies are inflating, rolling and compressing. These strategies are applied in pieces of furniture made of soft materials and associated with objects of short term use. Finally, most used strategies are applied to mass produced objects. In contrast, less frequent strategies are applied on prototypes that serve conceptual or artistic purposes. The main conclusion drawn from the study was that there are many past and present solutions of furniture that ensure a flexible use of the dwelling. The results shed light over a subject that is not common in mainstream furniture design. The strategies organized and illustrated in the paper, provide inspiration for more sustainable furniture designs.

Journal of Architectural Education, 2009

The intimate relationship of the designer and the client has led me to a parallel practice of investigating the built form of biography. The notion of working with biography is a device for avoiding willful design. It provides a conceptual guidance to make decisions. The medium that has been used is “furniture,” which is a smaller and more direct vehicle for ideas than architectural space.

Architectural Association, Seminar Christopher Hight , 2002

As our furniture dossier of the 20th century shows, paradigmatic changes occur when materials become used in a different way than they were employed before. The material may be thousands of years on the market as fabric in the case of the ‘Bean bag’, innovations as the laminated wood patented in 1878 or about fifty years for the steel tube. But only a different design approach offers new developments. As a society hardly ever renews itself from within but almost always is changed from outside or its edge, the breaking ideas for new furniture design are mostly coming from outside. Is it the bicycle/industry, the packaging industry or the (dress) pattern, technology is the ultimate force. Theories seem to support sometimes but are not necessarily the driving force. Neither Stam nor Breuer were leading theorists in the Modern Movement. However, a step forward is not necessarily about the genius of one person which is questioning the current state. The cultural environment is of much greater influence than the work of any individual. After the experimental decade of 1960 there was a between-time of helpless fun-remakes and other anti-design projects. Only the latest developments show an increased interest in folded landscapes with interchangeable uses, ideal for a future integration of the chip. The potential of the electronic era combined with an extended research of composite materials may actually lead to new furniture. Neither of the aspects are truly new, at this moment, but probably the chip is only now ready to be used by architects.