ONDA
Kinetic Wave Cabinet
CONSTRAINTS
We are tasked with designing a piece of furniture for a specific room in the house, with a mechanism that we must design ourselves. Our design must fall into one of four categories given by our instructor:
Isolation within isolation
Accessible / inaccessible
Escape Room
Visible / Invisible
VISIBLE /
INVISIBLE
I have taken a more artistic, abstract, and aesthetic direction in designing my cabinet. My inspiration was a “Wave Cabinet” designed by Sebastian Errazuriz, which has very organic and kinetic movement. It is rather impractical, so I wanted my design to be a bit more usable.
I chose to almost hide the cabinet within its own design. The doors blend into the waves of the wood, and sliding the doors open causes them to overlap in a very organic manner. As you open the cabinet, the door disappears within the other, revealing the storage space within.
The storage and contents are tailored for liquor and entertainment - whether it be board games, books, liquor glasses, or even tablecloths.
The shelf height can be adjusted to suit the user, and the cabinet can store up to nine wine bottles horizontally.
CONCEPT
Initially I had planned to have 1/4” slats, so the wave pattern was as visible and kinetic as possible. Due to the sheer volume of wood that would be required to construct this, I quickly realized this was unfeasible and increased the slat size to 1/2”.
An issue that I started to foresee in my design was what happens to wood as it ages - it warps. Although plywood does not warp as much, warping is inevitable. With such small clearance between the slats and no support at the centre of the sliding doors, I realized eventually the slats would not line up. To solve this issue I ended up extending each door by about an inch so they would overlap. and I would be able to put a support where the doors intersect - no warping.
FINAL DESIGN
Initially I had planned to have 1/4” slats, so the wave pattern was as visible and kinetic as possible. Due to the sheer volume of wood that would be required to construct this, I quickly realized this was unfeasible and increased the slat size to 1/2”.
An issue that I started to foresee in my design was what happens to wood as it ages - it warps. Although plywood does not warp as much, warping is inevitable. With such small clearance between the slats and no support at the centre of the sliding doors, I realized eventually the slats would not line up. To solve this issue I ended up extending each door by about an inch so they would overlap. and I would be able to put a support where the doors intersect - no warping.
SCALE MODEL
This is a 1/4 scale functioning model of my cabinet, with 1/8” Birch plywood slats and a Walnut veneered particle board body. Each piece was sanded and glued by hand, and finished with Tung oil. The doors each have two support pieces - one on where they meet corner, and one in the middle where they overlap. There are a total of four separate, offset tracks - two for each door so they can seamlessly slide in and out of the other.
Making sure each piece was spaced exactly right so all the slats lined up was a very labour intensive process - the constructing of this small 12 x 12 cabinet took probably 30 hours unto itself.
THE
COMPETITION
The culmination of this project was submitting to the Italian design competition run by TABU. All the constraints and guidelines for this project were the ones given by the competition host.
We needed to make presentation boards to show our designs and their inspiration, and what makes them special.
I tried to keep my boards as simple as possible, letting the design of my cabinet do all the talking - I wanted as few words as possible.
