GP Corrugated Furniture Set
Thank you to Liberty Packaging for donating the materials used in this project (Double Wall Corrugated).
Project Brief
Research, develop, and produce a bench that not only holds a person’s weight but is fully functional. Furthermore, it has to be able to be disassembled and reassembled without any problems. The ideal goal is to be able to help those people in need or without furniture. So they have a place to sit and rest.
Design Process
There are four pieces total to this furniture set. The first piece is the Bean Bag chair designed by Maxwell Christenson. Two, the rocking chair, designed by Tshajlij Fang, three, the bench, designed by Cody Jackson and me, and finally, the table that is the center of these three pieces, designed by Catherine Kelly.
Initial sketches were created to help visualize the individual pieces of these projects. In addition, an initial mockup was designed and produced to showcase how these pieces would come together. The miniature mockup was designed to be scalable. So after creating it, we could scale it up to the correct size or any size in general.
Miniature Mockup
After the sketches were made and the initial mockup finalized. The project moved on to its next step, creating life-size pieces. All of these pieces were created either through a windows application called ArtiosCAD or through Adobe Illustrator and then exported into the application.
Finished Product
Vertical Piece 1 (12 Pieces) and 2 (2 Pieces)
al Piece 3 (2 Pieces) and 4 (3 Pieces)
Vertical Piece 5 (2 Pieces) and Horizontal Piece 12 (18 Pieces Total/Different Sizes).
Vertical Piece 5 (2 Pieces) and Horizontal Piece 12 (18 Pieces Total/Different Sizes).
The next step in the process was cutting out the individual pieces on the school's CAD Table (Computer-Aided Design), or more specifically, the Kongsberg table. These pieces were then cut out on double-wall corrugated, which consisted of two layers equaling 5/16" thick. The main reason why this material was chosen was due to the extra layer of fluting. Since it had two layers instead of one layer, it could hold much more pressure or weight and be more durable.
Corrugated Bench in progress
Completed Furniture Set. From left to right: Bean Bag Chair, Bench, Table, Rocking Chair, Miniature Bench Mockup.
Design Team. From left to right: Maxwell Christenson, Catherine Kelly, Yeng Kong Thao (Me), Cody Jackson, Tshajlij Fang, and finally, our Professor, Pete Rivard.
The result was a furniture set that could be assembled and disassembled anywhere in the world. Not near water, of course. This project was fun, sometimes easy, sometimes hard, and very insightful, as we thought of it, designed it, produced it, and saw it come to life. In addition, the construction of the chair itself was eye-opening as it took more thinking than designing. For instance, where is the most weight distributed on the furniture, how do we keep the chairs from falling over, etc. Overall, I hope to see something like this happen in the world, so more people have a place to sit when tired, a place to eat when hungry, and much more.
