Practice Based Research

For my production process intervention I have been working with steam bending various types of veneer.
I was inspired by corrugated materials and made attempts to create similar structures with my chosen technique.
Based on my findings of various tests and models, I was eventually led to my final object which is constructed out of repeated identical forms.

Research approach: 

My research approach was initially inspired by corrugated materials such as various types of cardboard and IKEA furniture. This led me to making several attempts to recreate similar structures out of wood veneer.  

Central Question:

The main aspect that I was exploring and wanted to question was the strength of the material and where its limits were.

After realizing that I was trying to force the material into an application for which it wasn't meant I began to question what the idea of structure meant for myself.
 

Key Experiments and Insights

- The first significant test I made was to see if I could recreate a corrugated structure using veneer. After several attempts I realised that it wouldn't work and that I was trying to make the material do something for which it wasn't meant.

- The following tests involved exploring the visual qualities of the material while simultaneously looking to test the strength of the material. Based on these tests I realised that I should stop looking at strength and focus on the visual properties instead.

- The final tests consisted of attempting to simplify the process down to a single unit, from which new structures would be created. From these tests I was able to change my way of thinking about structures, that they don't necessarily need to be "strong" in the conventional sense and this can help lead me to new conclusions.

Design Criteria:

The main design criteria that I was always trying to keep in mind as I was creating models and working on the final object was:
 
- general simplicity, for myself this is an aspect that I value a lot. My aim is not to be minimalist but I find that when working on a project like this where it is handmade that simplicity in structure and form can be very helpful in getting a better result.
 
- testing material boundaries, an area of importance while working on this project was to test the strength of the material in order to get a sense of what can be done with it and what kind of an application suits it the best.

- aesthetics through structure, one of the main criteria in regards to aesthetics was for the structure to be a clear component of the final form. Essentially I was looking to create a single building block from which would in turn determine the final form and aesthetic.

- Once having realized that I wasn't able to achieve a sufficient structurally sound model I chose to direct the objects application to something that would ideally display its visual qualities

Relevance: 

The main relevance of this project is the overall aesthetic values as a result of the objects structural properties.

There is a lot of value to be had in looking at structure of other materials and applying some of these aspects in new ways
even if the outcome doesn't share the same properties as the original object.

There are a lot of other potential applications for this process in, by scaling these repeated structures and creating entirely new base forms a lot of new forms and products can be created from them.

Abstract: