For my stool project, I decided to work with a partner, Ryan
Jay. Working with a partner provided both challenges and benefits for this
project: We had two minds to devise a plan to make a cardboard stool out of
just cardboard, but this stool had to support two people.
When beginning our initial draft, we decided to attack to
attack this stage in the design with Mies van der Rohe’s idea that “Function
follows form.” We thought in the context of this project it was more important
that we figure out how to build something that can support two people, and once
we figured that out we could design something around that system. Our initial
design was a simple grid system, low to the ground with a flat piece of
cardboard on top. It was simple and not very aesthetically pleasing, but it
could hold up a person.
When moving into the stage for the final draft, we used some
inspiration from the class as well as our own innovation to create a two-person
stool that was both visually appealing and sturdy. To do this, we rolled up a
piece of cardboard and used “slits” to connect the two ends so that we had a
cylinder. After making two of these, we made a ring with a whole in it to put
around the top of the cylinder to hold the cylinders together even stronger. For
the inside, we cut a strip of cardboard that was the height of the cylinder and
radius of the top of the cylinder and inserted it inside to increase stability.
Then we put two pieces of card on each side of the long strip to give an “X” on
the inside of each cylinder. Lastly, we cut a piece of cardboard that attached
each of the separate cylinders to make one two-person stool, as well as provide
a flat surface to sit on. To our surprise, we only used 2 and a half pieces of
cardboard.
Going off the ideas of Steen Eiller Rasmussen, one must
experience our stool by sitting in it, as you cannot fully appreciate it
without sitting in it. The stool may seem unstable at first because of the way
the the surface lays on the cylindrical bases, but if you sit on it, you will
learn that it is a very stable object to sit on. Overall, Ryan and I were very
proud of our creativity and pleased with the way our stool turned out.
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