Cabanas
D'DAYS 2013
Date: 04 June 2013
Client: Silvera Poliform
Project type: Furniture
Cabana fabrication: Crea Diffusion
Photographers: Xavier Muyard and Ammar Eloueini

The cabanas are an exploration of making space at a scale between architecture and furniture. AEDS is interested in exploring the idea of framing more intimate areas within the openness that characterizes contemporary space and we have produced a number of projects to that end, including the fitting rooms in the Issey Miyake me store and the pleated storage walls in the Printemps and Harvey Nichols Issey Miyake Pleats Please locations. Although the cabana concept originated from an unbuilt design proposal for the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, we continued to pursue this idea and prototypes of the cabanas were constructed for exhibition in the Silvera Poliform showroom during the annual Designer's Days event in Paris. Contemporary materials as well as digital design and fabrication processes were employed to demonstrate the richness of tools available to designers of our time.

Fluid patterns are routed into the exterior Corian surfaces, wrapping over the top of the piece from each side. In addition, these patterns are continuous between adjacent cabanas, subtly unifying them into a single composition of discrete elements. These patterns are scaled and translated to also appear on the interior surfaces of printed fabric. Sound is absorbed by the fabric ceiling and wall surfaces which create a soft appearance within the semi-enclosed space. A dense foam cushion provides a comfortable seating surface on the interior (not included in prototypes).

We anticipate the cabanas being produced and marketed for retail sale. One can imagine them being installed in a range of private and public environments: to provide a shaded lounge area on an outdoor pool deck, to create an intimate meeting location within an open office space, or to provide discrete seating locations throughout an airport lounge or museum lobby. They are conceived as furniture with the potential to frame inhabitable space within a larger environment. The cabanas explore the way we live and communicate today, as well as speculate on the way we will occupy space and use furniture in the future.

This project received the support of DuPont Corian France.