Coexist: Cardboard Furniture Challenge Pt, 1

This semester for Coexist we were challenged to work with cardboard and make functional furniture that will serve each member of a typical family, for example, the mother, the father, the son, the daughter and the pet of the family.

We were allowed to make 1 furniture that served, for example, both the mother and father at once or any combination as such, but the final design had to include 5 designs each with the primary function to serve 1 specific member but can additionally serve another as well.

We then made a brainstorming of the various possible designs we could make.

Since I was leading the group, I made a spreadsheet where I kept all the links that we had google drives, miro board, google forms and so on. On the same sheet, we divide the tasks among each member and each of us proposed a theme. Since there was some confusion on how to come up with the theme I added a few notes and examples here and there for each member.

We then proceeded into creating a reference board with the possibilities or techniques we can use. We also had some Youtube tutorials on how to make a functional cardboard furniture.

We then made a google form which we shared on Facebook, but we didn't get many responses. On the other hand, we were told that the form wasn't good enough, so we made another form.

Together with the survey, we did some interviews with whoever we could find online. We were able to reach a few people outside of our relatives as well and we collected their responses on this Powerpoint.

We also started generating some ideas from those responses right at this point as well. We had a few designs for different members of the family and different proposals at this point.

Since we knew we had to have a focus group we decided to focus on the Asians from the survey and the interview since we were already in Malaysia and it would be easier to find people or simply identify the culture here by ourselves.

We had the following designs, a table that can be used to store things but can also be used as a resting place for the cats if the family owns cats. Especially in Malaysia, the people tend to have cats mostly as pets compared to dogs.

A dressing table that is multi-functional and can be used by both the mother and the father.

A library that is in the form of a house for the daughter and one in the shape of animals for the son. Alternatively we had a dice game for the son if we was a baby.

A coffee table that can be separated thus, despite being primarily for the dad it can be used by the other family members as well.

We also had a simplification design for the dressing table since the first proposal was deemed too extreme to achieve with cardboard.

At this point we were told that we don't have a proper theme, thus I came up with the following theme based on what we wanted to achieve and our current designs.

Our first aim was to focus on fauna and flora while focusing on bringing the family together. I came to realize that a cave serves both these recommendations, it is part of the fauna and flora while being the very first shelter of men, thus can be interpreted as bringing people together.

We started exploring more possibilities but this time one that is related to the new theme. We started looking into nature and other furniture examples that were inspired by caves and rocks.