The homes of the present and future are becoming increasingly smaller and compact and lifestyles are changing as well. This calls for a new breed of furniture which has new functions, including supporting new technology and behaviors related to it, new connotations of ‘family’, and a new understanding of ‘workplace’ which seamlessly overlaps with a ‘living space’. This studio looked at ways to study and design the furniture for contemporary interior spaces after studying precedents, user-behavior, and the spaces themselves.
Each student focused on an opportunity area for an innovative design solution through a rigorous design process. The process included benchmarking an iconic furniture piece which best addressed the issue, and rearticulating it keeping the contemporary context in mind.
The studio was hands-on in the first half, with students creating 1:5 models of their iconic furniture pieces in the workshop. In the second half, the focus was on the design process and on 3D modelling to create their final designs. Material exploration, structural adequacy of the proposed design, aesthetics, joinery, detailing, and context were the scaffolding which underpinned final iterations by nine students.
