craftastic

Little did I know, the world of cardboard furniture goes deep. Gehry led the field with his first line of cardboard furniture:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2006/10/05/curvy-corregated-cardboard-chair/

But he wasn’t the last apparently. I have found several links to companies that design lines of all cardboard furniture. The Swedish company Retur makes their business on all types of cardboard furniture. Finely crafted cardboard furniture. Expensive cardboard furniture.

                 http://www.returdesign.se/

                 and a video of one of the bad boys being assembled:

                 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrbGHG8uyFU&NR=1

And this Swiss architect,  Nicola Enrico Stäubli volunteers his designs and patterns for whomever is interested. Unfortunately, the downloaded pattern and instruction was 54 PGS LONG! That doesn’t seem very tree friendly. And it looks like they’re only strong enough to hold children. But they’re pretty. :

                 http://www.foldschool.com

This competition is fairly impressive:

                 http://www.designboom.com/cardboard.html

watch this unfold:

                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxD9UuiSAFo&eurl= 

One of the competition entries : YOC (YOUR OWN CHAIR) #469 by JOHAN CARLSSON was what I first chose to put together. It looked and seemed well designed with functionality in mind.

                 The pattern seemed straightforward, with just a little bit of measuring to do:

                 here’s the process of me putting it together:

                 Ultimately, it just didn’t stand up. I don’t know if I committed a serious design flaw orif he was using some kind of super powered cardboard. I didn’t feel like it folded easily, closed securely, or felt sturdy.

                 So I decided to try another that looked more stable. And it was. This one was by ILIA MULOSEY # : 467 and folded onto itself as well as using serious layers of reinforcement. I did the test of standing on it like in his picture and it did hold me.

But this design is less aesthetic and to really keep together, it needed packing tape. And it was also less aesthetic than the previous one. I figured there must be a way to combine Nicola’s folding technique and design aesthetic with Retur’s simplicity and Ilia’s sturdy structure…..

                 more later……..

As I was preparing to take apart a tape measure, I came across an old audio cassette and thought it would be an interesting disassembly. While trying to find an old walkman, I came across a yo-yo. I suddenly made the connection between the three: they are each an old school object that makes use of a circular wrapping element. Also, they require varying degrees of manual operation. The yo-yo is a completely manual toy; the tape measure has a stopping mechanism that is operated by the user; and the tape is completely operated by machine. I thought it might be interesting to compare the varying complexities of the objects relative to their functional operation.

Upon completion, I took inventory and found that with increasing functionality, there were also a greater number of individual parts and more complex parts that were potentially more difficult to put back together. I reorganized the parts in a number of ways:

by color-

by rigidity of material-

and by form-