I see this project as less about a specific type of furniture and more about experimenting with metal as a material considering the limited resources that I used to have.
This Series is my entry piece to furniture design and my transitional point from my student project to the professional world. During my time at Art Center College of Design, I had limited resources and was unable to afford massive production such as opening tooling or spending huge amounts of fixed costs at the very beginning. Therefore, I started to think of something that is very flexible and scalable, which leads me to sheet metal. The reason why I like sheet metal is that it is very accessible and affordable, which also gives you a very refined feeling depending on how you treat it. Just by showing people the design pattern and the making process, they can replicate the furniture themselves. To a point, it is almost like an open-source project that makes refined furniture within reach.
The Workman Series also invites users to view the furniture from different perspectives. Depending on which angle you look at the piece, it looks very different in terms of visual weight. Given the nature of sheet material, the user can always get a very robust and substantial form factor from one angle. However, the user can be amazed by how thin the material is from another angle. The interesting contrast of view angle and whitespace endows a magical moment for viewing how do the pieces coming together for the Workman Series.
Inspiration:
There are lots of design heroes that drove my inspiration to a point I couldn't really specify. Taking Charles Eames as an example, he saw design as a playground to test a novel type of material instead of making furniture for making furniture. Through his persistent experimenting and trying in the materiality fields, I was motivated to explore the material organically. As the materials transform from 2D sheet metal to 3D furniture, the Workman Series gains strength and functionality.
Creative Process:
Furniture to me is both a very confined genre influenced by human factor and materiality, as well as a very open territory, where everyone can take a very different approach. I started my Workman Series by juxtaposing it with typography. Like typography, every character has its own stroke and weight, as does the Workman's Chaise and Stool, which is grounded in the human factor. Moreover, with the material as the star of the show, the entire design process has been a journey of trial and error to test the metal's strength and flexibility. Eventually, the metal took the form where it retained its natural structure.
Form Factors:
The Workman Chaise was designed by thinking about how to get rid of all the unnecessary elements of a chaise without compromising its comfort. It is usually the case that a Chaise will give users a little springy feeling through a shock absorber or other much more complicated mechanism. The 5055 aluminum that I used for Workman Chaise had a memory of its materiality, which naturally produced this bouncing effect. It is always the Workman Series' goal to reduce a thing to its simplest form and function, capturing the essence of the experience. Only in this way does the material express its full potential.
Future Vision:
I do not intend to limit myself to a specific archetype or typology for the Workman Series in the future. Workman Series chairs, stools, shelves, or anything else can be created. I called Workman because I value the accessibility of the materials and how much they tie into fabrication. Hence, even beyond metal, any material that facilitates the accessible process could be incorporated into this product line to maximize its potential.
