in my industrial design undergrad, yeah sure ;) Why do you ask?

(I love furniture design. I used to hate it.)

Well, Industrial Design is understandable, but for an undergrad arch program?

my architecture program had a furniture design elective open to both grads and undergrads. it was a cool class.

are you complaining about having to design furniture?

We designed some furniture pieces in my architecture studio courses.

I loved it. Because of the scale, we were able to focus in on fine details. I thought they were great projects.

how did you guys evaluate the "comfort" factor of the furniture you designed.

A table doesn't have to be "comfortable" -- though it shouldn't be a knee-knocker. And I think a table is the perfect minimal architectural problem.

well i am speaking more on the grounds of a chair?

i personally think designing a chair is a great way to start
an architecture studio...i wouldn't want it to be the whole semester,
but furniture design and architecture have a lot in common...obviously
right?

and who says furniture HAS to be comfy? it should be more about
your idea and the execution of that idea...i mean you're not going
to sell this chair most likely..so why not do whatever you want
without the restriction of making it even practical?

Is that your assignment, specifically ?

The chair is a unique challenge, in that it (should) look good, but it (must) be both comfortable and strong; it alone (along with the couch, the bed, the stool and the rocker) must withstand live loads.

One approach to the comfort issue is to find a sample chair you think is comfortable and measure the seating surfaces carefully; then arrange a mock-up of similar materials arranged in the same configuration to see if you can duplicate (or improve on) the comfort of the sample.

yeah, but i ve heard from a lot of "pure" furniture/industrial designers, that they are annoyed by architects who also try to be furniture designers. Grr, they wrote an article about it, if i find it, ill post it.

Lars has a point; did you ever sit in Rietveld's Red/Blue chair ?

A great book I have somewhere on chair design points out that architects and other designers continue to specify uncomfortable chairs, decade after decade (perhaps for commercial clients who don't really care if their guests are made welcome ?).

Charlotte & Peter Fiell

But but but... it ROTATES!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I kind of agree on one level, that architects shouldn't be designing furniture (and vice versa). The concerns are different, the scale is different, the level of detail is different..... lots of differences, despite the similarities (they're both design objects, of course).

I think, however, that a good DESIGNER can design architecture and furniture. And clothes. And websites. And print materials. And ceramics. This is what a lot of our heroes did 50-100 years ago, and produced some of the best design objects and spaces ever.

i dig that...it has a Cubist look to it

Like it, tumbleweed. As a died-in-the-wool constructivist (with romantic tendencies) I appreciate that. This little ditty is a 14" cube that folds flat. It's rotating clockwise in the photos, shot in the dying light in my living room. I made a mirror-image twin, too.

ah! My design is intended to be for View "x"-scape. Meaning, landscape, city scape, water scape, etc. I have my design set, but I think I am going to have crazy trouble for the form. Because It's going to have some curves.

I bet it makes a perfect bedside stand. Mine is really a table -- I was (am) experimenting with multi-level surfaces. Haven't shot it folded, either.

Everybody should have a garage shop. I had to fold mine after another tenant blew the whistle on the management and we all had to clear out everything flamable. I had a nice platform built on the uneven concrete floor, in front of the Civic -- they paid someone to rip it up.

sunsetsam, tell us about the curves. Where there's a will. . .

we never had any assignments to do furniture. there was a course on it of course, but was always full (students built own furniture using furni-manufacturer's shop)...

still, i made my own furniture for grad school using my step father's shop (he is a mechanical engineer and has a very nice shop). the pieces came out nice enough, i suppose.

i am currently working on furniture, some real stuff, with an artist fiend. that is quite exciting and fun. comfort is essential but not point of the project. if it ever gets past prototype stage will post it somewhere.

apart from that i have been designing furniture as part of the business of being in architecture ever since i began working in an office. it is a requirement to be able to do built-in work at the very least, if not chairs and sofas. in general i quite enjoy designing furniture. i most love seeing it built properly by the pros instead of having to do it myself (cuz i suck really when it comes down to it). anyway, if you get to do it in school then i would think you are lucky. especially if they require you to build the design...

Furniture is the most intimate element in architecture, isn't it ?

Architects have always designed furniture, sometimes better than others and sometimes not. Wright persisted in uncomfortable and awkward furniture throughout his career. In his case he was too tied to the vertical and the horizontal, perhaps: many others as well have failed to recognize that a chair or couch with a perfectly horizontal seat will tend to make the sitter slide forward and cannot be really comfortable as a result -- no matter how much better (and simpler) it may look on paper !

As far as "architects design uncomfortable furniture" goes, all I have to say is look at the eames' moulded plywood and plastic chairs or their lounge chair & ottoman. Quite possibly two of the most comfortable pieces of modern furniture ever designed. Also, Corb's ponyskin lounge chair is extremely comfortable from what I've heard. Supposedly the Barcelona chair is extremely uncomfortable for long periods, as are Ghery's Cardboard chairs. Just goes to show that architects can design anything throughout a complete range of comfort.

"Architects have always designed furniture, sometimes better than others and sometimes not."

if you can design it...then do it...then build it.....

people get caught up in this "credit" thing where it sounds like you need a degree to really do stuff....

sure you might need the knowledge in some fields for "mechanics" but all in all...... just build it and go from there

case in point..... i can do rough carpentry/finish/tile/plumbing/etc.... but i didnt go to tradeschool.... i just made it happen.....


sure, you might have an architecture degree.....but how many times has people said "in the future i want you to design a house for me".....wtf....i'm sure that "stereotype" gets annoying after a while

i have met other "designers" in different fields and most of them are arrogant assholes that think the worlds owes them some big project...


if you can do it and make it happen...then do it..... cross-reference your abilities




b

Sounds good to me. Goes for architecture, too ? Is that what you're saying ?

i'm sure wayyyy back when there wasnt "architects" the local "builders" and/or tradesmiths were the ones that "designed" things

pyramids
huts
temples

etc....


wonder if they needed a stamp back then


b

There you go.

A favorite of mine, the recently deceased Jack Hillmer from out here in Northern California, built fewer than 10 exquisite houses in his career, starting in the 'forties. He said he refused to be licensed specifically in protest of a system which sought to exclude some from practice. His friend Warren Callister stamped his work, I guess. He pointed to the inconsistency of laws which permitted any man to design his own residence but not to design any other building.

Oh, these kooky Californians !

very nice house. that whole anti-licence thing sounds more like overcompensation than a real argument...;-)

i am pretty sure even amenhotep had specialists. Pretty certain Michelangelo didn't do everything on his own neither. no shame in that.

thing is while they didn't have licences back then, there were probably guilds. time to become master builder? what, 20 years? the process of doing architecture was not so different, the only real distinction being that the head guy could do a lot of the work hisself (but am guessing he did not). today? ehhhh, not so much.

Ah, I remember doing a cardboard chair for studio once. That was fun.

If you are still considering comfort I would do several mockups with cardboard or whatever to test for height comfort (back, arm, leg, etc) especially if there is any significant angle involved. When I designed a chair for furniture class I made sure the seat height was just right and that the back support was at a comfortable level. I also considered the offset of the back support to the seat.

Neato chair ! A little tippy, maybe ? (P Starck helped his three-legged chair by extending the rear leg quite a bit.) I like the minimalism of it. Three elements, three materials.

I absolutely second the advice to work with mock-ups to arrive at the right seating surface placement. A person would be foolish to charge right in to making a chair without doing that. But some are impatient. . .!

i think its important to consider where the chair (or any other furniture) is located, and what its use is. The use also decides the level of comfort too, and how you try to achieve that comfort. Obviously a Lay-z boy is pretty damn comfortable, but you can't use it when you're typing at a computer. Same as you don't want to use a stool when you're watching Tv.

Furniture is architecture at a much smaller scale, in that its primary focus is its use. While a chair can be beautiful by itself, i think that the reason that many architects (maybe not many, but the good ones) design furniture to be placed in their building because it is able to accentuate the space and the use.

some examples:

Boynton; Tugendhat. I've thought it was an odd mix to have both the M90 (Barcelona) chair and the cantilevered chair together. . .

Look how little curb there is to that lower roof in the Wright house. Rochester is snow country ! The man was a fool, on occasion. Can't blame him for wanting it that way, of course. . .

Sorry.

I guess you can't blame the architect for wanting his space to be dressed appropriately in visual terms. Wright designed sets of furniture for most of his projects, though the free-standing pieces like chairs are not necessarily closely based on the trim, much less the larger structure -- even if the wood species and therefore the color is made to match. But then, a chair isn't a door, and a table ins't a fireplace. Mies also made furniture for his early house, and (other than being minimalist, overtly structural and always elegant and well-made) it too isn't derived in detail or form from the buildngs. But it suits, so I guess that's enough. Maybe only a house and accompanying furniture made completely of bricks, or foam, or glass, or steel, would match perfectly -- and good luck with the furniture being comfortable !

So, architects choose other architects' furniture. Everybody used Eames, and Saarinen, and Mies. Furniture is furniture, and architecture is architecture. They're related, but they're (obviously) not identical -- despite my light-hearted if earnest effort to unite them.

http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3304&highlight=furnitecture

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14287804@N07/sets/72157602332868541/

Ha! imagine a chair made with brick, an air gap, insulation etc. Now that would be an interesting project

Hm -- how about it being like a piece if the house -- a corner at the floor, cut out and slightly angled for comfort, with part of the foundation wall as a base -- like something by Robert Matta-Clark and his chin saw. . .is that what you're thinking ?

Kind of, it was just a quick idea, i wasn't really envisioning anything in particular, but that's a good example

I love it.

nice! i've never seen that before, who did it?

I think we both did it, just now ! Furnitecture lives. . .

Add cushions as desired.

haha i love that sketch, particularly the way that the studs go from the edge of the seat to the exterior paneling, thats genious sdr

and i would only support the idea of cushions if it was 2" thick styrofoam...

Ha ! Why not ? Or a piece of carpet ?

You've just contributed to furnitecture. See definition 4.

Structurally, since the floor joists don't span and therefore are cantilevered, the wall studs should penetrate the plate and be glued at right angles to the joists. I like it. I guess the base, if not real masonry, can be weighted enough to make the chair stable. . .

. . .the piece of "foundation" is ell shaped, of course.

what do you mean by "You've just contributed to furnitecture. See definition 4." SDR?

also, http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3304&highlight=furnitecture

Maybe definition 2 is closer in the case of our chair.