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A Nomadic Furniture Design for College Students
Abstract
The moving experience is a nightmare for most college students, who tend to move more than other groups of people. Heavy, large bulky furniture, clothes and many other items take a lot of time and energy to move. Moving typically involves removing items from the chest-of-drawers and closet, packing items in boxes, suitcases, bags and other containers and loading them in a vehicle and transporting them to a new location where the process is repeated. This is chaotic and time consuming. Another issue is that due to the limited storage space available in the typical dormitory or apartment a way to create more efficient clothes storage is needed. Eco-friendly materials should also be emphasized to build the product that be durable and last long. In this thesis design a new Nomadic Furniture Design for College Students is created that addresses five major design issues: functionality (i.e. storage convenience, etc.), enhanced form quality (aesthetics), flexibility, simplicity and durability (eco-aspect) to promote long-term use. Existing dormitory furniture does not adequately address college students’ needs for clothes storage and moving frequency. This thesis explores design alternatives and makes suggestions for improvement.
... Yao et al. [14] explore the various types of joints used in traditional interactive (deployable) furniture. Lin [15] shows a variety of origami-based furniture designs which are currently on the market, which designs generally use pin joints or essentiallyzero-thickness materials to achieve their motion. Additionally, Parkinson et al. [16] have shown the application of thickness accommodation techniques as well as membrane hinges and LET joints to furniture. ...
Origami-inspired design principles — including thickness accommodation techniques, surrogate folds, and a rare use of nonrigid panels — are applied here in a novel foldable furniture item known as the Hidey Cube for use in a daycare facility. Each of the design principles is applied to develop the Hidey Cube and to help it meet its design objectives, including first: the need to provide a safe space for children, and second: the desire for this safe space to be collapsible, transportable, risk-free, and play-enhancing. Through analysis and consideration of a variety of hinges commonly used in origami-based design, and by undergoing an iterative process, two variations on the Hidey Cube design are presented. These two variations — a wood composite version and a fabric-covered foam version — are described and demonstrated. The advantages and disadvantages of each design are enumerated. The fabric-covered foam version utilizes non-rigid panels in conjunction with membrane hinges, which requires an interesting upholstery-based manufacturing approach to allow for the desired actuation while limiting undesired parasitic motion, also presented here. Non-rigid panels are demonstrated to be viable for use in origami-inspired applications, and specific potential applications and recommended future work are discussed. In applications where some parasitic motion is allowable and where non-rigid panels present other functional benefit — such as in furniture, shrouds for use over a medical device, or in wearable technology — the techniques presented here are particularly beneficial.
... The scalable nature of origami, its inherent motion, and potential for reconfigurability make its influence versatile and applicable in many fields. Origami has inspired a range of innovations including an origamibased helmet for emergencies , an unfolding telescope for space exploration , and re-configurable origami furniture for homes (Lin, 2011). ...
The ability of origami to alter its properties and behaviors with its shape makes it an elegant source of inspiration for many engineering designs challenges. Fold states specify the shape of the origami – its facets, creases, and fold angles. Origami research recognizes several acknowledged fold states: the unfolded, fully folded, and flat-folded states. However, these fold states are not comprehensive, excluding some of the most predominant fold states in origami-based devices. In this paper we propose a comprehensive list of fold states based on fold angles. We support the method of categorizing fold states by evaluating the functions and fold states of a large sample of origami-based devices. These correlations provide insight for selecting fold states for origami-based design. We discuss properties and behaviors of the fold states individually and provide a process for fold-state selection.
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