CONCEPT DESIGN
My main inspiration came from childhood, from a young age I would use Stickle bricks, Lego and Jigsaw puzzles to create objects and buildings. These products helped me to maintain focus and concentration within study periods and they also helped me to learn about construction. I wanted to use the idea of Stickle Bricks to create a piece of furniture which was fun, creative and could easily be put together and taken apart again using mortise and Tennon joints. I started to design a piece of furniture which was created from geometric shapes, after experimenting with a variety of different drawings I came up with a design which encompassed everything I wanted to gain from this project. After a large amount of research and experimenting, I came up with the design name as GeoPod. GeoPod is a piece of furniture which can be adapted for individuals and up to 6 people. Each component in the GeoPod can easily be taken apart and put back together due to its mortise and tennon joints. Alongside this, the pods are suitable for wheelchair users as the seat can be removed so a wheelchair can be easily manoeuvred into the shell of the pod. GeoPod was constructed for a variety of different users, ranging from students to passersby in airports or any space which requires contemporary interactive seating.
The space which I have decided to use is the heart space, this is because I believe that as the HEART/centre of the CSAD building I wanted to make it as fun, bold, bright and creative as possible to link in with the aim and ethics of the courses based in the building. With this in mind I wanted to ensure that within the space I made a bold statement with both my furniture piece and instillations. The heart space needs to be a multifunctional space where people can eat, work, read and chat. To ensure that this is maintained my furniture needs to be adaptable, as the GeoPod can easily be taken apart and put back together the space can easily be changed depending on the function which is required at that particular time. For example, during the academic week lectures may take place in the heart space, therefore the space will need to be adapted to utilise the space formally. Each component of the GeoPod can collapse and become flat packed therefore, the big installations and larger GeoPods can be moved into a different space to make room for the lecture. This links with the whole concept of this design and the brief which was set. The brief stated that we had to produce a piece of furniture which was sustainable and linked with the ideas of a circular economy. In today’s society plastic is the main feature of most products which are used in day to day activities. However, the type of plastic used can be incredibly harmful to the environment and therefore cannot be reused and recycled. My aim for this project is to use HDPE (High-density Polyethelene) this is a material made out recycled plastic such as recycled milk, shampoo and water bottles. Due to HDPE having weak cross bonds the material can be reheated and remoulded as many times as required. This, therefore, extends the life cycle the product endures, meaning that the product can easily be made into different products after its original use.
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