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Monday, April 11, 2022

Furniture Design Education: Spatial Mockups

In the large high-ceiling studios and workshop/fab labs where students design and then build their designs it is deceiving to judge the size of furniture designs meant for residential spaces. 

A large table or sofa may look right at home in the workshop or studio, but overwhelm any space you install it in at home.

A spatial mockup of a student's design volume at home or apartment can be eye opening. They can use boxes or other furniture with a sheet thrown over to fill the volume.  Sometimes just a tape outline on the floor will do. For tall designs such as shelf units a tape outline on the wall is recommended.  This is usually enough to convey the spatial reality of their proposed design in its intended final resting place.  Require photo evidence of the attempt.  I promise you at least a few students in every class will end up reducing the dimensions of their design proposals.  Without this step in the design process we see "monster" projects from a few in every class.   

I speak from experience as I still have the coffee table I built as a student.  It lives in my basement store room.  I hide under it during tornado warnings. As nice as it is, my college coffee table could serve as a dining table for 4 if it was just a bit taller.  In the college shop it looked great, and no one imagined it would overwhelm most residential spaces. 

You can extrapolate this concept to furniture intended for large commercial spaces or even outdoor installations.  This is where 3D rendering software can help foresee the spatial reality of  furniture designed for the space. You have to model the space though. The model of the furniture alone doesn't answer the "Too big or too small?" query. 

4D

 

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