The client is a long established furniture maker with over 125 years experience making high quality domestic and office furniture. The client has a reputation for producing high quality veneered panels and they are one of the few furniture companies still using traditional cabinet makers in final assembly. The company was looking for a design consultancy who could introduce new innovation and techniques and marry them with the skills of their in-house time served cabinet makers.
The brief was to design a high value, rapid installation, wire managed office desking and storage system with extensive 'signature' real wood finishes and an innovative structural metal chassis. Several concepts were explored until finally settling on a unique method of installation for the desking using long tie bolts to install the legs and feet onto the main beam. The worktop was located on slides and could be installed or removed in seconds. The storage elements featured sheet metal carcass's clad with removable exterior wood panelling. The exterior panels and worktops could remain unfitted until all other site services had departed. This new system was projected to make significant reductions in installation costs and enhance the clients product refurbishment operations.
The team was tasked with preparing a presentation of the final designs to secure an extensive protoype budget. This was done using traditional hand rendering techniques.
The cost of prototyping a full system was prohibitive and the prototype was restricted to the storage cabinets and standard desk and panels as these used the majority of common parts. The partial system was prototyped using a specialist fabrication service and the clients own cabinet makers seconded to the project. This required considerable liaison and scheduling of various parties around existing production commitments. The partial system prototype required the commissioning of twenty injection moulding tools, eight aluminium extrusion tools, five large die castings and several sheet metal punch/form tools in addition to numerous special jigs and fixtures and the manufacture of a batch of probably the worlds longest socket head screws.
