This is a furniture designed for kids at around kindergarten ages. As industrial designers, we as a group feel like there's a need that in this early stage educational environment, studying and playing should be combined. In order to do so, we create this modular system of furniture to encourage kid's exploration as well as to allow them to learn while having fun!
The pictures below show the process of the project. We started with mindmapping individually, which allowed all of us to gather all the information and built a blue sky idea which was broad at the beginning, but eventually came down to a consensus on a furniture thats modular, fun, inspiring and safe.
These are some thumbnail drawings that we did to explore different modular forms that could generate more interesting and functional forms.
We eventually came down to this module which forms a cube when two of them are combined. Individually, it serves as a table and two seats for kids in order to encourage the kids to work and have fun with others. With changing the orientation of them, you could also create different dynamics in the classroom. While digging more into details, we thought of holes, which eventually serves as tunnels that kids can have fun inside. Meanwhile, the holes could also function as shelfs when the modules are put aside and stored.
The orthographic drawing suggests significant elements here, such as dimension and material. Polypropylene is a very common plastic material used to construct furnitures since it's lightweight, easily molded and colored, flexible, and the price is significantly affordable.
The pictures below show the process of creating the one to one scale model using foams. A lot of measurements are within the process. We built the form considering the kid's height as well as the issue of safety. Therefore, the dimension here (38*38*38) is suggested based on the 40+ inches of average height of 5-6 years old kids.
