Pivot Couch
Time: 10 weeks
Materials: Recycled Aluminum, Latex, and Flax Felt
Skills: User and market research, rapid prototyping, CMF, CAD modeling, rapid prototyping, rendering
As remote work has become more common, people see coming into the office as a time to socialize, but many offices don’t have the space for this. This lightweight, modular couch serves as a space for casual encounters and office spaces.
Guiding Question (from Coalesse)
How do we create efficient, flexible, and collaborative workspaces through a craft-based approach in both user experience, materiality, and manufacturing?
Mood board and Form Exploration
I wanted to design furniture that could be adapted to different office sizes and needs in a form conducive to conversation.
Model Making and Testing
I focused on prototyping in cardboard to understand the stability. I worked both on 1:4 scale models to understand how the shapes interacted and form stability, and in full scale to understand how a human interacted with the couch.
I also created a full-size model on the ground to understand how people interacted with the shapes.
Form Development
My priority was designing a light, modular form which I did with bent aluminum.
This model shows the bends in the structure that allow it to be assembled with nuts and bolts.
After establishing the form and joint language, I create the family of shapes.
The couches are made of 3 basic shapes: the semi-circle, the rectangle, and the curve. These can be combined to create more shapes.