More press

The nytimes did an article on Alysia and David's house and green construction as a whole and we got a mention for the office!
here it is

Pic from The Nest

Thanks for the pics Caitlin

The Nest

The Nest magazine did a multi-page spread on the Harlem House in their latest issue, with our work in the office prominently featured. Thanks for the shout-out Alysia!

Final Bench design

Here's a quick CAD view of the final bench design, complete with AutoCAD Siting Woman and Strutting Man

real world strikes again

The past few weeks have been rather hectic for all of us. Those of us still in school (everyone except for David) had classes start up again, so our free time got drastically reduced. We're almost to the finish line on the bench for David and Alysia. We hit a little snag in the form of a budget cap that doesn't allow for the metal legs we had wanted to use. Didn't realize how expensive that sort of thing would be. We sketched out some wood leg alternatives but we all think the metal is much better, so we're going to eat that cost. Lesson learned: make sure to nail down a budget before going beyond initial concepts.
We've also been contacted with more furniture requests by several other people that we met at various Green Drinks or simply found us on flickr. We'll keep updating the blog as these new opportunities progress.

Feeds

We just enabled feeds for the blog, so now you can find us in your nifty little RSS readers. Our apologies for not enabling that earlier.

Methodology

With this project we're going to be going into a bit more depth on our motivations and more behind the scenes aspects of our design process. We're (almost) all still students so this is somewhat new for us. Just to let y'all know...
In the last project we tried to come up with concepts together before presenting them to the clients. We found that this method just took too long and quite possibly suppressed some good ideas since it was hard to get everyone to agree and sign off on each idea. This time we're all coming up with concepts completely individually and then bringing them together for some internal discussion, editing and refinement. This keeps us out of each other's hair while brainstorming so we can give the clients as many possible directions as possible.
In terms of format, some of the drawings were originally done in Illustrator, some on paper and some in AutoCAD, with our resident AutoCAD master Kris putting them all together. We wanted to avoid confusion and let the designs all speak for themselves, rather than one on paper suffering because it possibly wasn't seen to be as polished as one on the computer. Of course the first round of drawings were done on paper. We can get more ideas out there much more quickly that way.

Moving forward on the bench

After seeing all our sketches David and Alysia chose the angled plane one with the "stalks" for hanging hats and gloves. Next step was to refine that one a bit and give them some more options on how to take it further. We broke it up between the three of us (Joe and Tiffany are off in Copenhagen) and each took a different direction. Simon focused on a shorter design, Kris played with angles and some crazy legs while David took a more linear approach using Tatami mat proportions, which are 1 by 2 rectangles. Check the images below the jump (click for full-size).

Teaser

Here's a little teaser for our next project, a seating piece for David and Alysia's foyer. More to come soon, we promise.

And the shelves

More images of the desk

Dwell Harlem House Opening!

Here are the final images of the office system custom designed for Dwell's Harlem House. Check here for a walk through the entire house, along with the people who came, and more images of the office!

Office System Installation in Dwell's Harlem house!

Saturday Night, the night before Dwell's Harlem House opening, we began installing the office system. After the install we filled the shelves with books, rolled the Steelcase chairs into the room, and finally went to sleep.

.....Still Building.....

Yes, we are still building....not long until the Dwell event in Harlem!!!

Building More!

Finger joints, drawers, and press releases, what else could you ask for?

Kris in a box! There's a Kris in a box!

Where did she go?

We went here...

And picked up a couple of Think chairs.

Relaxed for a bit then trekked them up to the
Harlem House, where David took a well-deserved rest.

Building!

After about two months we finally started building yesterday! It always feels great to see the project coming together. The next few days are crucial, we have to install the desk and shelves in a couple of days. Tomorrow we are picking up the desk chairs that Steelcase generously donated for the office.

Keep checking back as we are building everyday! Check out Flickr for all building images!

Design options for homeowners

We have created options for the desk area within the office space. What we have decided on is a desk in which both Alysia and David face the window. Desk drawers are interlocking in the same manner as the shelves. The shelves are designed to 'speak' to the desk by climbing up the wall while also leaning towards the desk. The window sits lower then the desk, here we included a short depth shelf that runs along the window and sweeps along the other wall to meet with the shelves. This shelf is designed to hold small interlocking cubes where David and Alysia's handheld devices can live. Slots are placed on this shelf for wire management. The images above are initial options for both the desk and shelves.

Check out other images at Flickr!

Full Scale Models

Our full scale models took most of the day to build, as we were still creating options for the homeowners. Materials used for this exercise were found in the rummage bin at school. Hey, we saved money while using unwanted materials, we can't complain. After building the models, we headed over to Harlem to show David and Alysia their options for the desk and shelves. They were very excited, we were even more excited because we had gotten final go ahead on the options given.

Look out for our next few posts including design options, building, and installation! Things are moving faster than ever now!