Hasta La Ideas

New Designers 2011: design graduate Brendan Magennis has made a collection of flat-packed furniture that has no screws or glue and can be assembled with just a few hearty whacks of a mallet.

Magennis used a Japanese woodworking technique called a hell joint, where wooden wedges are driven into the ends of each dowel to pack them tightly inside the receiving hole.

Called Whackpack, the series currently comprises a table, bench and side table, with other pieces under development.

Magennis designed the collection while studying contemporary furniture design at Bucks New University and was shortlisted for the New Designer of the Year Award at the graduate show in London last month. See all our stories about New Designers here.

The text below is from Brendan Magennis:

My product Whackpack Furniture was shortlisted for the New Designer Award on preview night. It is a range of furniture stimulated by the discovery of the ‘Hell Joint’ through Japanese Joinery.

Whackpack Furniture is a flatpack inspired creation aimed for today’s nomadic lifestyles and shrinking apartments sizes. It is designed to fashion a new way for the consumer to construct furniture using wooden, a mallet and satisfying strength.

No allen keys and no glue required. The Whackpack range is made up of three pieces at the minute with other projects underway. I presented the Whackpack Coffee, Whackpack Jardinere and the Whackpack Bench at New Designers.

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No Screw No Glue by Joost van Bleiswijk	Stool by Michael Marriott for Paul Smith	Clamped Stools by Daniel Glazman

New Designers 2011: Kingston University graduate Andre Pereira has created a series of products to help with tricky DIY tasks, including these paint brushes that clip onto the edge of a tin of paint.

The DIY series also includes a brush guard that holds bristles together for neater corners and edges.

In addition, Pereira presented colour-coded wire strippers to help with wiring a plug and proposes that a plug’s prongs could be insulated with colour-coded plastic.

A heat-sensitive sticker attached to radiators would indicate when they need bleeding.

Pereira presented the project at graduate show New Designers 2011, which took place 6-9 July in London.

See all our coverage of the event here.

Here are some more details from Andre Pereira:

DIY Series: Painting

Brush Guard, Overhang Paint Can, Hanging Brush

The painting series promotes a clean working environment, through permitted conveniences, and reducing the amount of skill needed to carry out a professional job.

The ‘Brush Guard’ restricts the brushes bristles from spanning out when pressure is applied, giving the user greater control when painting straight lines. It also promotes tool longevity to often throw away tools keeping the brushes shape when not in use. Both the ‘Overhang paint can’ and the ‘Hanging Brush’ permit the user to rest wet paint brushes providing the user with a clean working environment. The Overhang paint can’s handle rests on the stopper permitting the user to rest their paint brush on the groove. The ‘Hanging Brush’ has notch which hooks onto paint can edges allowing the paint to drip into the can rather than down its side and the floor.

DIY Series: Maintenance

Plug Strippers, Coloured plug, Radiator Sticker

The maintenance series has been designed to simplify often overlooked tricky household tasks.

The Plug Strippers are designed to cut and strip the wires of a cable to the required lengths making the fiddly task of wiring a UK plug easier. The order the wires are stripped relates to the order in which they are attached to the plug. The strippers would consist of three blades 2 stripping blades and one cutting blade with the housing being compression moulded.

The Coloured plug is simple, by colouring the existing insulated pins with the according colours of the wires that would attach to them, assures the user they are wiring the plug correctly preventing the plug from being accidentally mixed up.

The Radiator sticker is thermochromic, meaning it reacts to a specified temperature; indicating to the user when to bleed their radiator. Air is a poor conductor of heat so when it builds up at the top of radiators it greatly reduces the heating systems efficiency increasing the amount of energy needed to heat a room. This means the bottom half of the radiator would be hot and the top half colder. By putting the sticker at the top of the radiator you are able to tell whether there is air trapped: When the heating system is on a red ring should appear showing that the system is working. When the system is on and the sticker remains completely yellow,then there may be air trapped.

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Ben Fursdon at New Designers	Hannah Niskanen-Benady at New Designers	Oscar Medley-Whitfield at New Designers

New Designers 2011: product design graduate Ben Fursdon has created the Broo-ver, a broom converted into a vacuum cleaner.

Fursdon reduced the ubiquitous household machine to the minimum number of components to make it easier to clean and repair.

A clear plastic jug collects the dirt and unclips to reveal removable filters. Components are arranged in a straight line along the handle, eliminating bends in the pipe to reduce blockages.

Fursdon designed the prototype while studying at Kingston University and presented it at graduate show New Designers in London last week.

New Designers took place 6-9 July. See more stories about the work on show »

Here are some more details from Ben Fursdon:

Broo-ver

Less plastic, less parts, less hassle: a new approach to the humble vacuum cleaner.

Vacuum cleaners are a household essential, used often, abused more often and thrown away in vast numbers. Due to the complicated assembly and myriad of components, many vacuum cleaners end up at landfill when they could be repaired. Broo-ver is designed to empower the owner. Stripped down to the minimum amount of parts possible, Broo-ver promotes easy maintenance, increased level of ownership and understanding  and longer product life span.

The main concept for Broo-ver came about after a trip to the local land-fill site. After seeing the mass amount of vacuum cleaners that were being thrown away, and learning that around 8 out of 10 of them could be repaired quite simply, I decided to design a vacuum cleaner with simplicity and minimal components. My in-depth research included deconstructing numerous vacuum cleaners (modern and old), spending time with the owner of the UK’s only vacuum cleaner museum (James Brown) and generally trying to learn everything and anything about vacuum cleaners. After creating various working models which were then tested on users, the final Broo-ver shape and components developed.

The end result is an elegantly simple and user-focused vacuum cleaner, which affords the owner a better understanding of how it works and increased level of ownership.

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The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites	Ultra Lead by Georges Moanack	Folding Plug by Min-Kyu Choi

Kingston University graduate Hannah Niskanen-Benady presented this series of side tables that incorporate knitted containers at graduate show New Designers in London over the weekend.

Niskanen-Benady designed the hallway or bedside tables for stashing small items like keys, coins and jewellery.

A hole in the walnut surface of each Safety Vase table holds the cashmere and merino wool vases, hanging below the table top.

New Designers Part 2 took place from 6 to 9 July.

See more stories about this year’s graduate shows »

Here’s some more information from Hannah Niskanen-Benady:

Hallway and Bedside Tables, Cashmere and merino hand knit framed by a solid walnut top and hand turned legs.

Experimenting with hard and soft materials and textures has been the muse for the Safety Vase series. The Safety Vase series empathises with wood and wool’s emotional and physical qualities to create a safe hideaway for one’s treasures. Knit holds connotations of safety, warmth and softness. Wood is a traditional furniture material that represents strength and longevity. The Safety Vase series explores and celebrates these qualities. It questions current furniture typologies and asks whether the emotional warmth of knit can be introduced to the hard world of wooden furniture.

A safe hideaway for those treasures that have a tendency to be misplaced has been created. The vase like form invites the user to touch and feel the softness of the wool whilst playfully hiding objects away, this furniture series is about experiencing the knit. It poses the question of why cant the first thing you touch when you wake up in the morning or come in from work be soft and comforting.

The knit is framed and contrasted by the hardness of the wood, both the minimal legs and the table top create a frame around the vase without distracting from it.

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1.3 Chair by Ki Hyun Kim	Hose Clip Shelving by Max Frommeld	From Here For Here by Ariane Prin