Suzak vs Bufa: Two Takes on a Textile Chair
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Like so many entrepreneurial-minded designers today, Daniel Aristizabal and Jose Manual Carvajal of Medellín, Colombia have turned to Kickstarter to launch their company. QSTO‘s (pronounced “KOO-sto”) flagship product, “Suzak,” is a chair that looks something like a piece of sports equipment mixed with, well, a piece of camping equipment. The chair form consists of a spandex-like fabric stretched across a curved steel frame, held in place by a single crossbar and a pair of heavy-duty shock cords. Check out the pitch:
Axel Yberg Goes All In: Custom Poker Table by Akke Functional Art
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Photos by Robert Lowell
We first discovered Akke Functional Art at the ICFF this year—how could we pass on a steampunk ping-pong table?—and designer Axel Yberg has all but outdone himself with his latest project. The “All In” poker table refers both to the game itself and Yberg’s recognition that building the Akke brand “has been a team effort and everyone involved has given it their all.” “On a personal level, it symbolizes the fact that when I commit to something, I give it everything I’ve got; mentally, physically, and emotionally. When I’m excited about an idea, the first thing I say is, ‘I’m all in!'”
Over 600 man-hours of labor went into the arboreal tabletop, which features fifteen species of exotic wood: Madagascar Ebony, Rosewood, Purple Heart, Zebra Wood, Wormy Maple, English Brown Oak, Black Locust, Claro Walnut, Quilted Maple, Sycamore, Cherry, Catalpa, Black Walnut, Quarter-Sawn White Oak, and live-edge Ash. And while the ligneous lines that comprise the striking web pattern of the surface are purely aesthetic, the rest of the table is chock full of symbolism:
The vectors that bisect each angle on the perimeter of the table are made from Madagascar Ebony and Rosewood. Their colors, black and red, represent the suits in a deck of cards. This idea is carried into the turnbuckle drink holders, which are designed as a quadrant of Black Walnut and Cherry. The organic nature of the live-edge Ash on the perimeter of the table symbolizes the fact that the game of poker requires complex thinking, as opposed to a systematic game like Black Jack. To be a successful poker player, you must have plenty of skill, nerves of steel, and a good amount of luck. The steel horseshoes that surround the WPT logos symbolize that combination.
The center of the table features a five diamond pattern—”a nod to the legendary Doyle Brunson and the [World Poker Tour] Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic”—that is backlit by Edison reproduction bulbs, set in Akke’s signature pipe fittings, while the gold-painted base is an ostentatious allusion to the “bling associated with Las Vegas.”
The final product comes in at 81” × 52” × 31.5” and, by Yberg’s best guess, roughly 300 lbs—hit the jump to see the making-of video…
ARQUITECTURA-G Channels Aqueducts in Claudio Chair
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It’s a shame that Spanish lacks an explicit parallel between the words “arch” and “architecture,” because Barcelona-based studio ARQITECTURA-G pays brilliant homage to the former in their “Claudio” chair for INDOORS (the furniture design department of the practice). Not that this linguistic lacuna it detracts from the minimal—dare I say archetypal—design of the chair:
The starting point of Claudio chair’s design is the arch as element and its repetition. The arch, traditionally related to the heavy solid construction rather than to the framework, is here decontextualized using it in a small scale piece made out of thin wood planes. The lower part of the legs is rounded so each one only leans in a single point. Then, the legs make up an L-shaped cross-section which transforms into arches in each plane, making the joints under the seat stiff.
To form the back, the rear arch grows without touching the seat—a horizontal plane that reinforces the categorically geometrical character of the piece—until it reaches the proper height. The trapezoidal form of the seat breaks the formal purity of the whole, giving in exchange a fake illusion of vanishing point, in the way of forced perspectives of the renaissance and the paintings of Chirico [sic].
At first glance, I thought it was powdercoated aluminum or sheet steel, but the product description indicates that it’s actually lacquered MDF.
LL’s Well That Ends Well: LLSTOL by Luka Locicnik
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Seasoned logophiles ought to know the answer to the common crossword clue, “Golfer Ernie,” without thinking twice, but here’s a hint for everyone else: it’s three letters long, and sounds like the 12th letter of the alphabet.
Of course, it’s more likely that Slovenian architecture student Luka Locicnik was inspired by his own initials than the South African PGA fixture. Whatever the case, the LLSTOL is a remarkably versatile pair of identical, interlocking letterforms that can be arranged to make a chair, a table, a shelf, or any number of seating and storage surfaces. While “its basic use is as a lounge chair, it can be transformed into other furniture types very easily and without complex details or metal components, [ideal for] students and young families with small apartments.”
Regarding the material, the website notes:
Laminated molded plywood is an excellent material for designing furniture as it is sustainable and has strong compressive and tensile characteristics. We want to use only natural and sustainable materials with as little environmental impact as possible. Slovenia is one of few countries with very high percentage of forests—over 60% of land is forest. For the LLSTOL we are using quality beech wood which is also the most common type of wood in the country, so LLSTOL is made entirely of wood and finished with quality matte lacquer.
Autodesk University 2012: Because We Can’s Jeff McGrew on Gathering CNC Knowledge
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Jeff McGrew and Jillian Northrup, the founders of design-build firm Because We Can, are not academics or theorists; they’re practicing architect-designer-builders and devout CNC users with the experience that comes from seven years of cranking out projects. They’ve also gleaned wisdom from interacting with friends and colleagues in parallel or adjacent fields, providing them with in-the-know information. Prior to McGrew’s AU 2012 lecture on “The Five Myths of Digital Fabrication,” we asked him to explain how the knowledge is won:
Because We Can at Autodesk University 2012:
» Super-fast CNC’d Gaming Tables
» Myths of Digital Fabrication
» Gathering CNC Knowledge
Things That Look Like Other Things: Floppy Table by Neulant van Exel
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Berlin-based design duo Neulant van Exel have the broad portfolio you might expect from a collaboration between an architect and sculptor, and their latest project, “Floppy Table,” is a surefire hit.
Although Jeff Skierka opted for CNC-milled plywood for his “Mixtape Table,” Neulant van Exel’s throwback-media-inspired-furniture is a rather more industrial affair, comprised of hot-rolled steel and stainless steel. They’ve also cleverly reimagined the iconic metal shutter as a secret compartment (GIF after the jump)…
Johanna Dehio’s Collaborative Improvisational Furniture
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We see plenty of upcycling and repurposing projects in the past, but those humble materials that find new life as furniture, lighting and other household objects are rarely of notable provenance, so to speak. Conversely, the museum setting—the rarefied domain of pure aesthetic experience—is typically considered to be exempt from sustainability, housing exhibitions that are duly spectacular and often labor- or material-intensive.
Thus, Johanna Dehio’s latest project, “Furniture – Improvisation,” offers metacommentary on multiple levels: her two-month residency at quartier21 of Museums Quartier Wien culminated with a one-day workshop, in which the general public was invited to build furniture from plywood from previous museum installations.
For last month’s Vienna Open Studio Night, “the set up of the gallery was made by pre-cut pieces of reused wood sheets coming from former installations or art pieces of the museum, [which offered] a mix of various shapes, surfaces and colors.” Visitors selected “pieces they personally like,” combining them with cable ties to create their own furniture.
It’s Stool Time, Part 3: Karim Rashid’s Sweet CNC Cedar Seating
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I’m totally digging these solid wood stools that look like they were made by elves with a 5-axis CNC mill. Designed by Karim Rashid for Italian manufacturer Riva 1920, the Fiore (first pictured) and Delta (second) are solid chunks of cedar. And the beauty of them, of course, is that while each are carved up according to that particular model’s CAD file, no two will ever be alike.
It’s Stool Time, Part 2: Extraterrestrial Seating by Jamie Wolfond
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Speaking of seen-at-Salone stools: Jamie Wolfond is pleased to present two new seating designs (he exhibited “Communicable Seats” at the RISD Furniture Design department’s “Transformations,” which was also at Ventura Lambrate this year). The “Lunar” stool is made from expanding foam, which assumes a distinctive ‘cratered’ appearance when cured in a run-of-the-mill rubber balloon. The result is a uniquely bulbous yet pockmarked seat, set on a tripod of matchstick-esque legs.
Wolfond has documented the process in a short video on his website.
It’s Stool Time, Part 1: Striking a Balance
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This is easily one of my favorite shots from Salone 2012…
At over six months out, we’re closer to the next Salone than the last one, but seeing as many of the projects we saw in April are worthy of closer examination, we were glad to see the “Sgabellissimo” stool turn up in the inbox last month. We got a first glimpse of the unorthodox two-legged stool (the pictures say it all) in Ventura Lambrate, where architect Claudio Larcher had co-curated the University of Bolzano’s excellent group exhibition “Vertigini.” (In addition to his faculty position at the University, Larcher is a principal of Milan’s Modoloco architecture & design studio, which is producing “Sgabellissimo.”)
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the stool can be inverted as a cartoonishly short ladder, like something out of, say, Super Mario Bros.
Incidentally, “Sgabellissimo” echoes the concept of another stool, submitted by designer Moritz Marder, which similarly requires balance… though it has a radically different form factor.
