THE DESIGN GOALS
“The design of this waiting room intends to achieve the ultimate sustainability by considering the economic, the social, and the environmental sector as a whole.”
The first and most important goal is to address some of the environmental problems that needs more public awareness – the first being climate change based on the organization’s request and the second against producer’s irresponsibility to consumer health. The issue of climate change is majorly addressed through the wall covering, which features warm transitional colors from yellow to red to allude to the rising temperature around the globe that is slowly boiling the Earth up. The choice of cotton was also a reference to the 2018 Hurricane Florence that devastated the cotton production in North Carolina. Recent year scientific research has often found link between the increasing power and amount of hurricanes and the warming of sea water slowly over the years. These evidences, ranging as little as the ripped cotton flowers to the heating ocean, are clear indications of the underlying problem – it is like we have set out house on fire without noticing it, and we just sit inside doing nothing – with the cotton wall covering expanded all through ceilings, a sense of heating up should be evoked.
The second design intention questions nowadays manufacture’s responsibility and consciousness to buyers’ health. This was done by careful chosen materials that are considered both eco-friendly and human friendly. Take beanbag fillings as an example, many beanbags in the current industries uses #6 Plastics as their so called polystyrene fillings. However, even contacted by hot water, polystyrene can evaporates toxic gas, and in fact is not meant to be long termly used in interior. The fillings in the beanbags design here are filled with #5 Polypropylene, though heavier in weight, it is the strategy to educate people when they ask why these beanbags are heavier that we tell them the often hidden truth.
IMG.1 – Research Notes &. Sketch Sample
IMG. 2 – Measurements &. Floor Plan of the Site
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- Color Story of the Design
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- Rendered View in Color 1
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- Rendered View in Color 2
The Furniture Selection – An Order of Randomness
IMG. 3 – Furniture Selection Overall: Large Size Deep Wine Red Bean Bags, Mid to Small Size Beanbags or Poufs
“Everything in the room are free to move around, Emphasizing the community experience”
IMG. 4 – All beanbag covers will be in organic cotton, coffee table features a hollowed basket bottom but not perfectly symmetrical and a orange top Made to wood
The Soft Material Feature
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- The whole piece self-hung together by the cotton fibre, the uniqueness of the tension is exactly the beauty explored here. only 2 tiny glue dots were used here – 1 at the far mid left and one at the right top side.
The Sculpture of Fibre
Cotton was featured not only because its relative low cost, or a higher availability, or it promotes local economy and agriculture, it is also the unique fibre from the rawest cotton that attracts me. First inspired by the Silk Pavilion – a project by MIT Media Lab – that we have seen in class, the power and fragility of the thin fibre web became an ambiguity that I have wanted to explore. Then I started to experiment, with the simplistic cotton balls that I could rip to expose the complexity of fibre structure hidden inside these phenomenon crops, and highlighted with water base gouache paint, the result become sculptural.
“The cotton wall design is also proposed to be used along with a ceiling light to cast dramatic effect”
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- Gouache paint is able to provide the pessary opacity whilst not adding too much weight to the parts that still expose the original cotton material
