New Orleans Days 3 & 4

Though Monday didn't go quite according to plan, it was still very enjoyable... but lesson learned: for the most part, the Big Easy takes Mondays off.  Brooke and I planned to spend the day in the Garden District and Uptown and later City Park.  We soon learned, however, that most of shops on Magazine Street were closed.  After deciding to save it for Tuesday we hopped on the Canal St. streetcar to City Park to look at art at the museum and take a break from the sun.  Our plans were again spoiled when the museum was locked up.  Nevertheless, we took a lovely stroll through its sculpture garden...

Recent Work: Part 1

I have been meaning to post some little projects I've done these last few months. I'm so far behind on that that I now have enough to post it as a short series; so here's part one.

The program: book storage (high-parent's, low-children's), object display, and workspace for Noah. Atop of that was my desire to play around more with metal rods that I had begun working with in my Interior Architecture thesis project.  So I got some off-the-shelf brackets that I painted to match the wall, two depths of poplar and a block of aspen that I finished with linseed oil, and metal rods I bent into two different types of bookends.

Noah has definitely made good use of his desk. It is so sweet to see him sitting at his chair concentrating on his own art.

Fun Thrift Store Find

Last Friday I found this chair sitting outside at a local thrift store. It caught my attention right away. I knew we had to get it when I saw the price tag said ten bucks! It's in pretty good shape; the only noticeable wear on it is on the edge of the arms. It had a skirt around the bottom of it that Nick ripped off to expose the pretty wood legs underneath.

Flat

This semester I've been doing an independent study with one of my favorite architecture professors. The subject matter was completely open to what I desired to investigate, so I turned it into an opportunity to design and develop a product to add to our now latent shop, HENNstudio.
To include a research component, I began by assembling a quick collection of flat-packed designed objects.  Flat-packing is of interest to me because our business completely relies on shipping.  Flatness has both economic and environmental benefits for shipping.  The mobile we sell on babydarling, for example, has a shipping thickness of about 1/2 inch.

For the research, I was less interested in IKEA-type assemblies, and more interested in maneuvers such as tailoring, bending, and folding.  Instead of relying on a multitude of small parts and hardware, these take advantage of material properties and rely on very few and simple steps for the customer to turn the 2-dimensional cutout into a spatial object.  I thought I would share a few fun designs:

This is a spread from the catalog I intended to produce... I decided it wouldn't leave enough time for design. This is one of my favorites: the Piegato designed by Matthias Ries Design Office in Berlin.  The powder coated sheet of laser-cut steel is shipped completely flat. The customer then bends by hand, along perforations, the desired number of shelves with ease. The entire process, including mounting with simple screws, takes only a few minutes.

Above are a couple other examples of products that use bending. I adore the Real Good Chair.  The powder-coated steel ships flat and folds along laser-cut lines to create a dynamic and comfortable chair. "As skinny as a supermodel, yet far more sturdy." There is a fantastic little documentary on the chair that I would recommend.

Above are just a few more fun designed objects I happened to come across. Enjoy.
1. belkiz feedaway : portable feeding chair
2. unless coral lampshade
3. sara paculdo's flatchair
4. fuchs+funke's papton chair
5. josh jakus's floppy basket
6. fozzils