Archinect - Features

Opendesk, cracking the production code for open-source furniture

2016-03-30T15:12:00-04:00

Before the Industrial Revolution, if you wanted a new piece of furniture, you’d go to your local carpenter. Today, you’re more likely to buy a chair that’s made of Brazilian wood, designed by a Swede, and manufactured in China than one with even a single locally-produced nail. Enter Opendesk, a furniture company with a global network and local manufacturing model, which might just spark a new revolution in the industry.

How the couch furnished modernity’s notions of privacy

2016-03-07T14:10:00-05:00

In the 21st century, the couch is so ubiquitous as to be virtually invisible. We find them in commercial waiting rooms, in private homes, as infested harbingers of urban decay on street corners. They populate television talk shows and form a shorthand for psychiatric evaluation. But how has this piece of furniture, which has only been around for about 330 years, become the seat of our culture?

Working Out of the Box: Jader Almeida

2016-03-02T08:19:00-05:00

Working out of the Box is a series of features presenting architects who have applied their architecture backgrounds to alternative career paths.

In this installment, we're talking with Jader Almeida, a Brazilian furniture and product designer.

Are you an architect working out of the box? Do you know of someone that has changed careers and has an interesting story to share? If you would like to suggest an (ex-)architect, please send us a message.

A sheet of plastic, a few screws, and five minutes are all it takes to assemble one of these "darling" stackable chairs

2016-03-01T15:34:00-05:00

IKEA may be the main peddler of assemble-it-yourself furniture, but, as many disgruntled college students would attest, their designs are often less-than-easy to realize. The "Thermoplastic Darling Stackable Chair", on the other hand, requires just one sheet of pre-scored polypropylene, a few screws, and about five minutes to put together.

Leftover inspiration: the construction aesthetic of "Chair 6.0"

2016-02-28T11:56:00-05:00

What happens when you bend a six-meter long piece of rebar 14 times? Well, this chair, for starters. By using found materials at a construction site and carefully planning ahead, University of Michigan alum and architect Moon Joo Lee was able to create this chair without any welding or use of bolts.

Innovation with a heart: Guto Requena's technological and emotional designs

2016-02-27T11:54:00-05:00

Imagine “technology". What comes to mind? A robot? An iPhone? A self-driving car? Whatever the case, chances are it’s an object that feels pretty cold and provokes little emotion.

Between art and design: rethinking function with Hand Job Gallery Store

2016-02-23T17:55:00-05:00

Google “art vs design” and you’ll find a slew of fairly common sense diagrams and articles. “Good art is a talent”, stipulates one, while “good design is a skill”. Or, similarly, “good art is interpreted”, whereas “good design is understood”. My favorite includes two identical images of a chair. Beneath one reads the caption, “a chair: design”, while beneath the second, “a tree: conceptual art”.

Screen/Print #40: Alexandra Lange's "Power Positions" from Dirty Furniture, issue #2

2016-02-17T17:43:00-05:00

In the high-gloss landscape of design magazines, all tables have been wiped clean. But in practice, things get messy: our desks are cluttered, our kitchens are flecked with sauce, our careers take form or falter as we finger the seams in the Formica. In this issue of Dirty Furniture, the second in a finite series of six, an object usually shrouded by its ubiquity is illuminated by a series of essays that considers the table not just as a formal object, but also as an architecture and convention that structures our familial, social, political, and spiritual relationships.

Getting the chair: how cinematic villains' seats illuminate character

2016-02-14T00:07:00-05:00

Imagine Hannibal Lecter in a lawn chair: not quite as menacing, right? While furniture in film can be a subtle part of the mise-en-scene, for cinematic villains, their signature chair often defines their character, even if that character is rotten right down to the studs. What chairs do the best job of bringing out the worst of an empire-crazed nihilist, or a serial killer, or a limelit psychopath? To answer that question, we had these ten evildoers take a seat according to their preferred vice.

Waka Waka's furniture strikes a balance between simplicity and playfulness

2016-02-08T11:17:00-05:00

Waka Waka is a Los Angeles-based design studio founded by the Japanese-born designer Shinichiro Okuda. Taking a minimal approach softened with a bit of humor, the studio’s striking, handmade plywood furniture has a distinct and contemporary look.

A misting mirror, a chair that shoots fireworks, and other material experiments by Soft Baroque

2016-02-03T17:44:00-05:00

Soft Baroque, the London-based design studio founded by Saša Štucin and Nicholas Gardner, has made pretty significant ripples in the design world for a practice just barely two years old. Their strange but visually-delightful furniture functions both online and offline, incorporates unwieldy materials like fireworks and water vapor, and treats history like a hunk of clay to be molded. They have an adept and playful way of involving conceptual elements in their work that makes you wonder how form and function alone ever seemed like sufficient ends for a design – or, at the very least, why your living room table is so boring.