Assembly Clips
Useful information
- Team members
- Oliver Hawkes
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Keywords
- Reconstruction repair 3D-printed furniture fixing
Short Description
A fixing system to enable the creation of reconstructable and evolving furniture.
Detailed Description
In 2018 a North London Waste Authority survey found that 22million items of furniture are throw away each year in north London alone. This staggering figure is in part caused by the modern ‘fast furniture’ trend, where cheaply constructed furniture is sold as a flat pack bargain who life only lasts until the first chipboard joint starts to fatigue. This issue is compounded by another phenomenon of the urban nomad, where moving house is a common occurrence, this repeated packing and unpacking of furniture causes increased furniture fatigue even by the most cautious of nomads.
Assembly Clips, uses simple 3D-printed components to facilitate the making of furniture with the only a drill. Using pin and clip system to create stable joints, furniture can either be created from scratch or existing furniture can be repaired with minimal expertise. The aim is to use online platforms to create a user populated catalogue of furniture plans, that can be reproduced, developed and personalised.
Project Details
- Does your design take social and cultural challenges and human wellbeing into consideration?
It enables the user to take greater ownership of their surrounding using cheap to source materials. Creating longer lasting connection to the things that they own and hopefully in turn help to develop their own personal confidence that they don't have to just rely on the next catalogue of furniture that the large retailers have to offer.
- Does your design support sustainable production, embodying circular or regenerative design practices?
The system aims to reinforce the idea of repair over replace. Through easy to understand joints, only what is broken needs to be replaced. Assembly Clips wants reduce the material and transportation impact that buy new entails.
- Does your design use principles of distribution and open source?
In essence Assembly Clips is two 8mm holes filled with two 3D-printed pins and a clip that can support weight. Using a jig designed to fulfil these parameters any number of clip designs could be created. Currently I have designed three fixings but with the diagram being uploaded to the internet I hope that could be many more in the future.
- Does your design promote awareness of responsible design and consumption?
In building their own furniture, the user will get a better understand of the process that is normally hidden to them. It builds upon the original notion that assembling flat pack furniture creates connection to it and extends it to repairing furniture. Stamping furniture with your own repairs and creation could help to break the cycle of fast furniture.
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