Reconstruct Furniture at the Design Does exhibition last April.  Photos of the exhibition taken by Lou Caltabiano and Amy Li

In order to further push the line, I knew I needed to recruit a team member who had skills and knowledge that would benefit the furniture most.  For that, I looked to Matthew Malesky, who is also a University of the Arts alumni.  Malesky was a woodworking major and now practices his art professionally in the Philadelphia area.

In order for us to make this project successful, we are trying to garner help from a lot of our contacts around the city and its outskirts.  Our material is waste from a local Pennsylvania-based panel manufacturer with a keen eye for sustainability and responsible industry practices.  We’re planning on devising better marketing techniques and entirely rebranding the project.  Branding and marketing aren’t our strong points, so we’re going to Brolik Productions in Manayunk for that.  Brolik is an interactive marketing agency that has built a reputation for top-notch service and hugely successful projects.  Our friends over at Postgreen are helping with consultation and advice, as well as providing a setting for photographs in their beautiful homes.  Production of the furniture is going to be done at NextFab Studio.  NextFab is an awesome place in the city that not enough people know about.  It’s a high-tech, efficient “gym for innovators.”  Their equipment ranges from plasma cutters, laser cutters, CNCs, and 3D printers to traditional shop tools like table saws, miter saws, and various bandsaws.

Our experimentation and development of this project wouldn’t be possible without funding help from The Corzo Center for the Creative Economy.  Their Creative Incubator program offers a chance to compete for various grants to be used to grow creative ideas into both non-profit and for-profit businesses.  Senior fellow of the Corzo Center, Neil Kleinman, is extremely helpful in both advising and expanding contacts for more particular advice.

Please stay tuned, as we’re ironing out the branding/domain/hosting now as we finalize designs.  We’re both very excited to be working on this project, and we hope that some people out there may be too.

There are five majors coming together from The University of the Arts collaborating on one show.  Industrial Design, Graphic Design, MultiMedia, Masters Industrial Design, and Museum Studies will all be featuring a wide variety of work.

Check out the exhibition’s website

Reconstruct Storage Module

Reconstruct Step Stool

Furniture is made from OSB scraps from panel manufacturers, milk paint, and a water-based sealant finish.

My senior studio project has been progressing steadily since its conception in January (2010).

I began to envision a line of furniture that could be created from construction site waste, particularly the wood waste.  Common byproducts of the construction process are OSB (oriented strand board) and dimensional lumber (2x4s, 2x6s, etc.).

Lumber, such as pine 2x4s common in construction, is tough to rely on.  It is almost never going to be perfectly square, which is important in furniture making.  Pine isn’t the best quality wood, either, it is soft and prone to splintering.

Oriented strand board, on the other hand, is a material that I can truly connect with.  People’s perceptions of OSB vary, but it is most commonly associated with raw, unfinished construction and garners its particular connotations from that image.

I find OSB to be one of the most modest materials around; it’s a super structural engineered wood product with a unique “grain,” giving it an apparently random face.  In truth, those strands of wood are carefully oriented in a manufacturing process that distinguishes OSB from particleboard.  Strands are oriented in layers, oftentimes with perpendicular, adjacent layers that provide rigidity and strength, similar to plywood.  Due to this manufacturing process, OSB has been replacing plywood in many construction jobs, since it is just as strong and usually a few bucks cheaper.  Another solid advantage is that in the manufacturing process about 90% of the tree is used as opposed to 60-70% in plywood.  Smaller, more renewable hardwood trees can be used, which makes the material more socially responsible.

The project is on schedule in terms of the timeline I’ve set out for it, and I’m currently involved in the prototyping stage.  Collection will be occurring in the next couple of weeks from both local construction sites and from panel manufacturers that are producing scraps they cannot use.

I’ve been changing my site around ever since I put it online, but I think I finally got the layout right this time; with a very simple, straightforward interface.

I’ve created digital entries of a lot of the projects in my portfolio in my online journal.  However, if you go to my work page on the top navigation bar, it’ll bring you to a list of those projects.  Simply pull up the entry I posted by clicking one of these links.

Let me know what you think of the new site, enjoy

Check out this little idea I’ve been working on between school projects.. Let me  know what you think

Interactive Business Cards

For more pictures/process/info use the link above

// front and back of each of the two pamphlets we distributed.  For larger images; child relief pamphlet & environment pamphlet

From October – December 2009, Jared Delorenzo and I researched different charity organizations and created this guide.  The information was all gleaned from IRS Form 990′s, and the information was distributed in pamphlet form.

These laser cut cards have pieces that pop out and snap together to create playful animals.  The critters still have website information and name on them, and they can accompany bored employees at their work desks.

Work began October 2009.  This project is still being worked on