Rachel Auerbach

Studio Spring 2007. Furniture.

+ Turn knock-down furniture into an open-ended kit of parts that encourages playful activity and imagination in child users with each new configuration.

+ Provide a sense of architectural containment.

+ Design and fabricate aluminum peg, steel thread and nut, and wood body connections using metal lathe, angle grinder, drill press, and sanders.

+ Multiply function with convex and concave curves that allow for stability and rocking.

+ Prepare for flat pack, resource-efficient cutting and shipping.

+ Design for long-term durability in quality and in usefulness after childhood years.

Tools Hand Sketching Sketch and Laser-cut Models Mock Ups Wood Shop Metal Shop

Phases SD DD

An open-ended kit of parts that supports a child’s changing uses within a small space, Twist explores fabrication to create an engaging new type of furniture. Twist turns knockdown furniture on its head, asking the child to take it apart and reassemble it in a new configuration.  Twist is simple to understand - put a peg through the pegboard and twist it into a center block to lock it in place.

Twist reconsiders the process of making, using the metal lathe, a precise machine, to make an imprecise form, and an angle grinder, an imprecise tool, to make a precise form. This furniture explores the making-of in both its production at the hands of the craftsperson, and its process of playful use.