#oregonpine

Let talk about prototyping.

This is my favorite pieces so far. Commissioned by Christian Kotter, who had already bought a coffee table in the same style from us. He liked it so much that he wanted it as a dining room table.

I have never built this design at such a large scale and there were a few things to consider if we were going to build this piece with the same skinny lines. 

1) Will the tabletop be strong enough to support itself and additional weight. If not, I would have to design a support system into the base of the table.

2) What gauge steel rod should I use for the legs. Similarly the legs need to be strong enough to have zero flex or bounce.  There are different qualities of steel each with their own characteristics; ability to bend, weld, colour and cost.  

So as designer you need to find the perfect balance between using the correct materials which meet your strength requirements whilst at the same time being aesthetically pleasing, the common denominator being cost of materials.

This is where prototyping comes into play. Its a trial and error game, you literally need to build it, test it, build it, test it, until you get it just right. 

This was so much fun to make!

I can not remember how I stumbled upon this idea but when I did I knew it would be a prefect project. What better person to have in your festival entourage than a bartender on a mobile bar.

The most important social/cultural event of the year for my wife and I, is the Afrikaburn festival in the karoo. The only mode of transport at this festival is bicycles.

This mobile bar was build in two evenings using recycled oregon floorboards. Crazy to think of where this wood has been, In nature minding its own business, cut down and laid as a floor in Cape Town, ripped up and converted into a bar cruzen the karoo desert.

Competing in the framing business is another story. There are so many people producing picture frames in Cape Town not to mention the cheap imports, so the competition is hot. What could we do to separate our frames from the rest?

The solution was to design something a little different. I designed frames in different geometric patterns, very similar to what you would see in our cladded wooden pieces, the result was fantastic.

Its all simple geometry, somthing I would never have thought of when I was sitting in class.  

It was at this point in time that Caroline Viitanen, an artist representative, saw the imagery of our latest shoot and suggested that our work has a very Afrometric style to it.