Origami chair & table
Matter & Matter Vintage wooden furniture project, 2011
by SWBK (design studio SWNA+BKID)
From when the SWBK design studio first opened, I worked as an product designer for 8 months.
I participating in many design projects for the Matter and Matter furniture brand, and in particular I participated
in a project to design sustainable furniture that was manufactured using discarded wood material from Indonesia.
While wooden boards discarded from disassembled houses and ships in Indonesia made up most of this wooden material, because of the lack of strength of these boards, only large sized wooden material was being recycled. we required a design that used this discarded wooden material.
‘Matter and Matter’ strives for a sustainable design and finds solutions to this objective based on the inherent characteristics and properties of the materials used. Therefore a design that revived the original value of the discarded wood was explored.
But because this discarded wood had previously been used as material for ships and houses, its thin board form nature resulted in a wood that lacked strength, which gave many limitations when trying to use this wood for furniture. But we were able to find a solution through a 90 degree structural design.
The yellow area in the diagram is a design structure where the crucial parts of the design intersect at 90 degrees.
Through this structure, we were able to explore and research different structures that ade even these wooden boards strong enough to be used as furniture. While we were able to integrate the angular characteristics that the wood created when intersecting, we also strived to derive the most beautiful proportions and angles through an endless number of configurations and attempts.
This furniture set is able to ruggedly bear unbelievably high amounts of load for a furniture made out of discarded wood without any trouble.
first proto type
Origami chair & table
