Furniture as Art

One of the new courses that we offer to our students is Product Design. This course allows students to consider the interesting balance between form and function when creating utilitarian objects. One area of particular interest is the evolution of form and our ever-changing notion of aesthetics as applied to furniture design. Students are asked to think about the notion of furniture as something beyond pure functionality, but rather something that is a reflection of taste and personality…a post-modernist notion, I know! For example, a chair might be a something to sit on, but it is also a piece of sculpture that has a prominent place in our daily living environment. With this in mind my students were given the task of designing a piece of furniture that had three distinct functions (ie. chair, table and storage), while also providing significant sculptural qualities that are reflective of themselves. After some significant thought and planning they set about producing a model of their final idea using light weight wood and any other available materials that would allow them to represent their concept in a three dimensional form. They then photographed their model and using Photoshop created a suitable promotional poster. This enabled them to visualize their design to scale and view it within a real world context.