Architects ain’t just architects. The proof of this is surely in Australian practice, Edwards Moore, who’ve been getting attention for everything from exhibition design – with their recent creation at last year’s Fringe Furniture – to some amazing homes – like the Cubby House from 2010 – to object and furniture design.
“Our work informs object/furniture design in both methodology and process,” says Principal Ben Edwards. “We start with an initial idea and then develop it through testing, playing and making – much like our architecture & interior projects.”
Ben’s ‘offcut stool’ recently made it as a finalist in the 2010 Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Awards. The ‘offcut stool’ is exactly that, a stool made from reclaimed timber off-cuts.
“The inspiration came when walking out in Marysville and seeing some of the tall trees had huge pieces of bark hanging from them.”
This initial spark of an idea turned into a number of timbers held together in compression to create a stool. The raw beauty of the off-cuts remains intact, while the gaps of the top have been filled with putty and finished with linseed oil and wax.
“The varying timber was collected from nearby building sites and skips over a number of weeks and we’ve developed a process of fabricating the stools using a number of moulds so that we can make more than one at a time and use of all the differing timbers,” Ben says.
We love that these stool are using reclaimed timbers, but equally we love that it’s design inspiration for us all – that we could just as easily produce our own original furniture designs using similar off-cuts.
“We are currently collaborating with adam&eve projects to work with a number of international artists to customise a number of the offcut stools as a series of limited editions which is really exciting.”
If you’ve got the time you should definitely head on over to the Edwards Moore website and check out their other projects.
Edwards Moore
edwardsmoore.com