Gallery / Featured Work / ICFF - The Construct

Clemson University's School of Architecture was selected to present work at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City May 14-17. Clemson and five other schools from around the world were winners of the ICFF Design School competition and their winning work was exhibited at the fair this past week. The 17th annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair is North America's premier event for contemporary design, drawing design professionals to an extraordinary display of the world's cutting-edge modern furniture, a rigorous curriculum of programs, and a full calendar of exhibits and features. More than 18,000 interior designers, architects, retailers, facility managers, wholesalers, store design professionals, hotel and restaurant designers, manufacturers, students, and media participate. Part of the fair each year is the ICFF Design School competition, where educational institutions submit work which must formulate a problem and present a design solution in the form of original student-designed products and prototypes.

Virginia San Fratello, a Professor in Clemson University's School of Architecture, taught the class that designed the winning entry. She challenged students to discover a new logic for bringing together different categories of design such as architecture, graphic design and furniture design. Students examined the hybrid as a potential generator of architectural tactics and form through the cross profile referencing of traditional architectural constructs such as floor and wall and industrial designed products including chair and table. The students designed a construct that considers the relationship between architecture and industrial design by allowing mass customization to influence the design of space by utilizing digital modes of design and production to create a pattern of 68 ribs with unique profiles every 3/4". Realizing there is a considerable amount of waste as byproduct using this method of construction, the students redefined waste to have a positive connotation by giving it a new use. Essentially the furniture becomes a byproduct of the architecture, yet informs the architecture as it creates a displaced landscape on the wall and floor that responds to the human body. This discovery revealed that immediate co-dependencies could exist between architecture and furniture. The students design also investigates potential co-dependencies between architecture and graphic design. The 68 ribs are literally and structurally held together by a text embedded into the construct that describes their design process to visiting architects, interior designers and furniture designers at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. The construct is composed of 10 discreet sections that can be close packed together when the construct is closed, in this position it is not inhabitable but can be read. When the construct is open, it can be occupied but the design process can no longer be read. In this way, the architecture becomes a space for interaction and disclosure through the displacement of its components.

The construct can be used as a reconfigurable seating environment. It would be ideal for a gallery, museum. or library where it would operate as a richly layered sculptural object while simultaneously functioning as a place for lounging, contemplating, reading or socializing. Institutions interested in exhibiting or obtaining the construct should contact Virginia San Fratello at (864) 656-3902 or vfratel@clemson.edu

Design Team:

Melissa Bauld, Sam Bennett, Jeremy Chinnis, Kim DeMars, Megan Duffy, Mason Edge, Matt Frankel, Natalie Gambill, Danny Herrera, Marc Leverant, Derrick Simpson, Tanner Sharpe