inspiration, ikea hackers

The "ikea hacker.net" website is an online blog in which people around the world have submitted pieces of ikea furniture that they have customised or give new purpose.

some of the "hacks" are quite simple i.e. using a cheese grater as a lamp shade and this kitchen skimmer is now a soap holder.

but there are other examples on a much grander scale where people have created whole walls from cuboid vase's and this whole old school tradition looking library out of cheap book cases.

There are many more "hacks" that people have done, the idea of taking a cheap product and reusing it to create new and interesting as well as potentially more value to a property product shows great potential and i hope to be able to come up with some new and innovative ideas.

University project, second year, negotiated study project two, Up-cycle

For this project i want to do something similar to my last project but far more in-depth and looking into modern pieces of work/ furniture instead of old.
I plan to be far more thorough in my efforts to gain and understand what it is i am trying to accomplish, by researching into processes and documenting this on my blog and then trying it out. Also i am going to use real products but only sections so my ideas have time to evolve.
I would like to come up with a small range of finished products which show and display the new processes i have used as well as being a finished piece.

Evaluation

my initial plan for this project was to create a range of chairs which would be displayed to show a physical dairy which shows some of the processes i have tried out and ended up with finished products. From this it was brought to my attention that this did not have enough depth to really show processes so i investigated into working on one chair and this where the idea of the destruct/ construct came from.
My first chairs were all aesthetic changes like upholstery, pant work and studding. My next chair had interesting features which i wanted to use and carved wooden skulls out of oak which fitted in to the shapes within the chair, i looked into uses of chairs from modern to old and wanted to bring some of these ideas into my work.
I felt that i made sure that i always had something new that i had done each week to further my project which helped when it came to the one on one and group tutorials as i had more insight into what i had done and where i was going. I would have liked to have started my de/construct chair earlier to weather the chair and try to get plants to grow in it as well as trying out other techniques on it.
If i was to do the project again i would have liked to take the initial chairs to a much fuller extent by changing the structures more and learning more about some traditional techniques. I would also have liked to look into more artistes and designers to gain more knowledge into what can be done in the media i was working in.
I think the project as a whole was a success, i developed from my original plans with a range of chairs to something with more depth to it and came out with some interesting and exciting results. Also i only worked directly onto real products instead of working small scale with models which gave me a greater knowledge of what i was working on.

From documenting the destruct/ construct process i think the best way to present it would be to have a nice range of images at each stage and then the chair itself but i am not going to using the seat panel in the final presentation as it has a very strong stench of burnt hair as the cushioning in made from horse hair and other fibres, but as there are images it shows what it looked like with the seat covering.

here are the images i am going to use to go along with the chair itself.

this is the final burnt chair which has cooled down. As you can see it has lost small parts of the very bottom part of the some legs and the smouldering has burned away areas of the wood to create this un even shape to the lines of the chair.

this is a selection of photos i took during the burning process to capture the stages of the burning chair.

here i have put plants in and around the sides and back section, also threw the seat itself to mimic the plants power but with some natural beauty.
i would have liked to have organised this earlier so i could encourage some natural plant growth and weathering as this would have created a much more in-depth and impressive over all look and feel.

This is the extended nailed area but with some patches to show the hole pattern, which i think changes the look and feel of the chair by creating this dark look to it but still quite uniform.

The up-scaled destruct/ construct process.

I have feathered the whole front of the front two legs including some of the leg detailing, i think that the feathered wood will char well if i burn the hole chair after i have done everything to it, the texturing of the wood as it is is quite light but is still very visible so i think it will work well with the other things i am going do to it.