Furniture Design - Otto Tribus - Three Legged Stool

Design Project Furniture

SHIKHAR BHARDWAJ | SEM 5 | 2019

Guided by : Chandra Vijai Singh Basu Vansit

“A chair is a very difficult object.

A skyscraper is almost easier.

That is why Chippendale is famous.”

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Contents Introduction Ideation Overview Design Brief Discover Re-Brief Brainstorm Themes Design Principle Form Identity Mock-up Materials/Mood Concept Development Reflection

Introduction

The document shows my journey, working on my first furniture piece, which I have waited for long to work on.

Before I start, I really want to thank Mr. Chandra Vijai Singh for providing useful insights and his experiences, as an Indian Furniture Designer. Also, making me question my design approach on multiple levels. Mr. Basu Vansit, for guiding on how and where to come up with my final product.

And not to mention, our lab-assistant, Mr. Prabhu, which at times, do godly wonders.

I mostly concentrated on the form and the beauty of product rather restricting myself on material, style, budget or technique.

ideation

“Searching for an idea should require all of the senses and should not be a specific activity. The generation of an idea should be a continual process of observing, listening and recording. The eyes and ears are critical tools, but it can be easy to look and not see, and to hear and not listen. Inspiration is everywhere and everything can be inspirational.”

Keeping this in mind, I started looking for approaches to start with. Furniture Design is very vast to cover-up, there are chairs, beds, cabinets, benches etc; some are for indoors and some for out. So, I initially started with sketching, few chair side profiles and later elaborating on my intial sketches.

Overview In classrooms, we discussed, a lot of International Designers, Charles and Ray Eames, Alvor Aalto, Hans Wegner, George Nakashima, Marcel Breuer and carefully understood their styles and methods of construction.

At start, a lot of experimental furniture designers were Architect who were already good at structures and now, have to build something that could suspend human on the surface above the ground. Bauhaus has a great contribution in modern furniture designs like cantilever chair, Barcelona Chair, etc.

Apart from all these, we also looked at the work of Ganjana Upadhya and M P Ranjan amongst the Indian Designer.

OUTDOOR FOLDABLE CHAIR

Elegance Poise

Cantilever chair

Peacock chair Windsor

Design brief As a part of our module, we watched a documentary on German Designer, Dieter Rams, directed by Gary Hustwit.

He talks about the 10 principles of good design and how we, as young designers should follow it too.

Since, this was our first furniture, we were asked to make simpler products like bench or stool.

Benches are long seats designed to seat multiple people simultaneously. The most basic bench is one without a back, but common benches seen in public areas and parks usually have arm and back rests. Benches are versatile pieces of furniture and may be used in both outdoor or indoor environments. Originally made of wood, benches today are made from a range of materials that include metal, concrete, stone, and plastics.

Stools are a piece of furniture that consist of a single seat for one person and a base of one or multiple legs.

Traditionally, stools were differentiated from chairs by their lack of a back, but modern variations and definitions of stools may now include designs with arms and backs.

The simplicity of the stool concept has made it useful for a variety of functions that include seating for children, flexible outdoor seating, and seating for restaurant and bar counters.

When designing or choosing a stool, differences in materiality, durability, height, weight, and seat size are important specifications to consider.

Discover Questions to ask: Three legged or four legged?

Height of the stool and its purpose?

Stackable or not?

Foldable?

Square top? Circular? Triangular?

Weaving on the Top? Bespoke to customer’s need?

Special Function?

Patta/Low height stool/With priest or teacher/A little level up from the ground to show the importance when everybody is on floor

Pidda/Charpai Stool/A little more raised up than Patta/Normally used by the women of the house to churn buttermilk or wheat sorting

Platic monoblock stool/ Industrially made/Bulk/Recent Material/Cheap/Easily used to clean fans or reach to the upper shelves of kitchen/ Stackable

Re-Brief Giving it a final thought, I decided to go about to design a stool with inspiration being “other-wordly” form. Bench was too big of a piece to work on to start with. So, to get more confidence on material handling and maker’s instinct, I would make a stool on my own, to learn what cannot be taught in the classrooms.

Hoping to make it in wood turning with four legs.

The spirit and soul of an idea is perhaps a combination of sensory and instinctive awareness and it is not uncommon for products to adopt life characteristics in their make-up.

Brainstorm “An idea can arrive at any time, but it can also be encouraged. It is often thought that the development of an idea is initiated with a brainstorming session: a process where a trigger term is selected and then associations or related analogous themes are communicated.

Brainstorming is a verbal process, which involves the identification of key terms associated to an initial idea and the subsequent unleashing of creative directions. It can also be a visual process, which involves the generation of small, thumbnail sketches that are related to, or are tangential to, an idea.”

Unfamiliar object Brutalism Other-worldly Hanging Spiky Common odd things

Elevated Alienated UFO Cartoon/ movies Sleek

Speed Unreal

Bizarre

Aerodynamic Daft Punk Elongated

Visualstorming

Themes

Brutalism Space Common odd things

Transitional Speculation

Design principle Aesthetic-usability Effect Aesthetic things are perceived to be easier to use than ugly things. Aesthetic things are more likely to be tried, accepted, displayed, and repeatedly used than ugly things.

Aspire to create aesthetically pleasing designs. It is more than ornamentation-it is an investment in user acceptance, forgiveness, and satisfaction.

Alignment Alignment among elements in a design creates a sense of unity and cohesion. Align every element in your designs with one or more other elements. This will improve the design’s perceived stability and overall aesthetic.

Archetypes People are instinctively drawn to certain patterns. Such patterns are often referred to as archetypes. These includes faces, horns and canine teeth, snakes, spiders and sexual forms.

Contour Bias Things that posses sharp angles or pointed features activate a region of the brain associated with fear.

Flow A state of immersion so intense that awareness of the real world is lost. When people are not challenged, they become bored. When they are challenged too much, they become frustrated. Flow occurs when people are challenged at or near their maximum skill level.

Flow A state of immersion so intense that awareness of the real world is lost. When people are not challenged, they become bored. When they are challenged too much, they become frustrated. Flow occurs when people are challenged at or near their maximum skill level.

Prototyping Rapidly building low-fidelity models to explore ideas and deeply understand problems. Research, not development.

The goal of prototyping is understanding.

Rule of thirds A technique of composition in which a medium is divided into thirds. Generally results in aesthetically pleasing compositions. Centering the rule of thirds, when a composition is symmetrical and contains one dominant element, will increase dramatic effect.

Similarity Things that are similar are perceived to be more related than things that are dissimilar. One of the Gestalt principles of perception. Similarity indicates and reinforces the relatedness of elements.

Form Identity

Limitations A stool has to be at a height of 46 cms.

A stool has to be light in weight and, strong and stable to carry 70 kgs easily.

The leg touching the ground has to be 2.5 cms wide (on wood) to support the whole structure.

The seat cannot be more than 40 cms wide, it would be too big.

Cross members give stability to the structure.

Side profile and top view of scale size(1:5) initial concepts and experimenting on forms.

Experimenting on wood turning forms and finding character in it.

“In cases where an idea is beginning to lose its momentum it needs to be carefully evaluated to decide if it is to be terminated. Being able to conclude that something is not appropriate is a positive rather than a negative as to peruse something destined to fail is pointless.”

New concept Exposed flying legs attached to the single top without any cross members.

Mock-Up

Looking for the answers in shape - Circular vs Triangular

Prototyping the hardware and understanding it through close scrutiny.

Working on the scruptural form of the stool’s leg.

Scrapping layers after layers.

Taking the edge off the top

Making the top more inviting to sit on and making it more cuter.

Material/Mood

The rawness of wood exposed towards out and similar top. Sheesham was the best option to show that. And the mood board below reflects similar style, i wanted to achieve.

Let the folds of the tree trunk over the period of time, be visible and a reminder that it takes time.

“The innocence of wood has been explored for generations using different methods and philosophies. This pristine and valuable resource that is so often shaped and formed into beautiful arrangements, can be reused and reinterpreted once the particular product it was originally crafted for has reached the end of its useful life.”

Concept Renderings of the turned leg of the stool.

Concept - A | metal angle incisioned onto the groove inside a leg.

Concept - B | New modified and for better stability, a horn like shape, to hold the leg in the position.

Development

Labour and Cost Wood (Sheesham) unseasoned Metal Hardware

Laser cutting

Welding, Holes and powder coating Screws 1” Oil

Rs 750

Rs 500 Rs 150 Rs 50 Rs 250

Reflection On a personal level, this Design Project was a great learning for me, as I understood the realm of Furnitures, not only this, but also, how I used my past experiences and skills to make this Project a success.

There was less Design Process involved but more designing things.

Few questions always kept me buzzing, like, do we really need another designer stool or a bench? Can’t we just standardize these things and move onto the bigger problems? I guess, not so soon.

We will only wake up when the house is on fire.

The small daily learnings accumulated over the weeks have been sufficient, especially, the anecdotes of CVS Sir, his stories of past were indeed inspiring and motivating.

“Everything I do, is the product of my own journey.”