2021 | Bienenstock Furniture Design Competition

to cover the distance between an idea and its realization

H I S T O R Y O F I N D I A N C R A F T

B r i t i s h R u l eI n d u s t r i a l R e v o l u t i o n

H a n d m a d e a n d m a c h i n e - m a d e

E A S T I N D I A C O M P A N Y

C r a f t m u s t a r t i c u l a t e a r o l e f o r i t s e l f i n c o n t e m p o r a r y s o c i e t y ; o t h e r w i s e i t w i l l b e a b s o r b e d b y f i n e a r t o r d e s i g n , a n d i t s s i n g u l a r a p p r o a c h t o u n d e r s t a n d i n g t h e w o r l d w i l l b e l o s t .

O n l y 1 / 3 o f m i l l e n n i a l f e e l t h e i r o r g a n i z a t i o n i s m a k i n g t h e m o s t o f t h e s k i l l s a n d e x p e r i e n c e t h e y a r e a b l e t o o f f e r .

T E C H N O L O G Y, G L O B A L I Z A T I O N A N D C A P I T A L I S M

C A R E F U L L Y C U R A T E D F U R N I T U R E C O L L E C T I O N B Y A M A L G A M A T I O N O F H A N D M A D E T R A D I T I O N A L I N D I A N C R A F T A N D C O N T E M P O R A R Y D E S I G N T O E X P E R I E N C E F U R N I T U R E A T A C O N S C I O U S L E V E L . T H I S S H A L L E N C O M P A S S A R T I S A N S , D E S I G N E R S A N D C O N S U M E R S .

H A N D S A T W O R K

H o w a r d R i s a t t i i n h i s b o o k ‘ A t h e o r y o f c r a f t ’ , d e s c r i b e s c r a f t a s u n i q u e l y b e n d i n g f u n c t i o n w i t h a d e e p e r e x p r e s s i o n o f h u m a n v a l u e s t h a t t r a n s c e n d c u l t u r e , t i m e , a n d s p a c e .

T h o s e w h o p r o d u c e p a r t i c u l a r o b j e c t s o f a e s t h e t i c a n d / o r f u n c t i o n a l v a l u e a n d p u r p o s e . I t i s u n d e r s t o o d t h a t a c o n s i d e r a b l e a m o u n t o f t i m e a n d m a n u a l e f f o r t g o e s i n t o c r e a t i n g s u c h o b j e c t s , o f t e n t h r o u g h e m b o d i e d a n d r e p e t i t i v e p r a c t i c e s , g e s t u r e s a n d a c t i o n s ( I n g o l d 2 0 0 0 ) .

R i c h a r d S e n n e t t w r i t e s t h a t d e f i n i n g f e a t u r e o f t h e a r t i s a n - c r a f t s m a n i s t h a t h e p r o d u c e s f o r t h e s a k e o f d o i n g s o m e t h i n g w e l l , w i t h c o n s u m m a t e e x c e l l e n c e ( 2 0 0 8 : 1 4 4 - 5 )

c r a f t

c r a f t s m a n

C O N T E M P O R A R Y C R A F T

C R E A T I V E D E S T R U C T I O N

TARGET AUDIENCE

C R E A T I V E D E S T R U C T I O Na r t s & c r a f t s r e v i v a l

B Y M A K I N G F U R N I T U R E U S I N G C R A F T W E ’ R E N O T J U S T A M P L I F Y I N G A E S T H E T I C S O F A S P A C E B U T A L S O C R E A T I N G A N E X P E R I E N C E W O R T H R E M E M B E R I N G , C R E A T I N G M E M O R I E S A N D S T O R I E S F O R L I F E .

W H Y F U R N I T U R E

U s e o f l o c a l m a t e r i a lC r a f t c o m m u n i t yS u s t a i n a b l e l i f e s t y l eP r o m o t i n g h a n d m a d e p r o d u c t sC o n t r o l l e d r a t e o f p r o d u c t i o nM a c h i n e s a n d t o o l s p r o v i d e a s s i s t a n c e a n d n o t o v e r p o w e r a r t i s a n s

M a d e t o s t a y !

L E A R N F R O M H I S T O R Y

DESIGN APPROACH!" " # $ " % $&'( ) *

architecture/ structuralfurniture/ durabletableware/ easy to cleankitchen tools/ sanitary

bambooapplication

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bamboo

WICKER

BAMBOO

RATTAN

CANE

A process using natural or synthetic materials to weave chairs

Is a grass and is hollow. Harder thavn Mahogany, the giant timber can grown to over 98!. tall.

Is a vine with solid center. It is one of the hardest wood, can be bent and woven

Outer bark of Rattan used for tying pieces together for finishing

POSITIVES

Renewable: growth rate of 3-5 years

Low harvesting cost: Only stalk is cut, leaving roots in the ground to regrow

Healthy Harvesting: Periodic harvesting allows sunlight to reach other shorter plants

Erosion Prevention: Its long roots binds soil together

Oxygen: absorbs greenhouse gases and produced 35% more oxygen than an equivalent lanting tree

Life cycle: Long product life

Recycle: can be renomved and reused

Biodegradable: natural material

LEED: recognized ecofriendly building material

Material Structure: hard and less porous, low absorbtion and scratch resistant

Overexpansion: potential imbalance in local biodiversity

Lack of FSC certification: FSC promotes sustainable forest management

Formaldehyde: present in adhesives used to bind bamboo

Transportation: carbon emission

NEGATIVESbamboo

Allay Chair.

Built to Stay.

In India, art & craft is a “way of life”. For me, the urge to know the story behind these beautifully crafted

objects in my country was realized when a middle-aged skilled craftsman came in a desperate search of

work to support his family’s livelihood. These crafts and craftsmen seemed to be stuck in time with their

age-old forms and aesthetics. The value of craft is on a constant decline in the modern world of

consumerism. Realizing the issues of the Indian craft industry and trying to meet its true potential, the

Allay Chair is designed to defy time and tradition, including the most extensive and evocative line of

hand-built furniture. With a commitment to honor and build upon Indian craft tradition, this series seeks

inspiration from the past and reinvents classic furniture forms for contemporary living. A craft form can

be contemporized by changing its traditional use of colors, patterns, motifs, or application. This

preserves the ancient building techniques while passing on the material intelligence acquired through

centuries; by further enhancing the acceptance and appreciation towards craft forms, locally and

worldwide.

Furniture has blended seamlessly into our habitats making it an integral part of our lives by providing

function and ease, but it's more than that. Furniture has the power to set the aura of space, direct social

settings, and initiate conversations. Our furniture holds memories and speaks stories of the times it has

lived through. It is the change, this alteration, that makes it necessary to examine the machine-made and

the handmade, not so much in their existence as physical objects per se, but in terms of the way, their

making and existence reflect our social structure and help shape our social values. The Allay Chair is a

celebration and tribute to the skilled humans who made craft a part of their lifestyle and kept it alive. It

supports fair trade with the craftsmen, believing their work must be acknowledged firsthand and valued

at a justified price as an artifact of cultural tradition. The goal of this piece is to use craft to evoke

emotion and create a delightful experience for users while keeping the furniture relevant to today’s

lifestyle.

William Morris, the great craft reformer of the late nineteenth century, was one of the earliest writers to

espouse environmentalism. He famously asked his contemporaries to “have nothing in your house that

you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” This sentiment still rings true today, especially

suggesting that objects must be meaningful. A single thing may carry numerous stories of people who

made it or who have lived with it, the challenge is to be able to see those stories. I believe that by

challenging this legacy and building respect for material intelligence across cultures, we can form a

bridge that emphasizes shared experience: a greater awareness of things we hold in common. To

address the ideology, the Allay Chair is designed with a vision ‘to stay’.

To make the furniture relevant in contemporary spaces and lifestyles, traditional craft and classic

furniture forms were selected and brought together with relevant craft experience to create something

unforgettable. These elements are still present in local homes and people are quite familiar with them

thus showcasing the transformation possible, to give these forms a new life. Multiple samples of the craft

forms were collected from the walled city of Jaipur, India, and studied in detail about the origin and

unique process of form-making to produce objects of desire in a sustainable way. Meeting craftsmen in

India and spending time with them watching every step and involving myself in making it gave immense

clarity of various possibilities and extent of these crafts to be manipulated in furniture design as integral

parts.

Bamboo includes some of the fastest-growing plants in the world. The material is typically cut into strips

of proper width, dried, then soaked in water to make it flexible before it is woven into wicker. The

process of bamboo weaving involves interlacing two strips, warp and weft, of bamboo usually at right

angles to form an object. Weaving style is not only limited to an individual but also it can tell us a lot

about its place of origin. Some of the commonly found weaving styles are coiling, plait coiling, plaiting,

multi-directional plaiting, and twining.

When properly constructed, it can have the same structural integrity as many hardwoods, but being a

grass, it is much lighter and more versatile. The obvious economic and environmental advantages of

bamboo follow as: it grows quick as a straight reinforced segmented culm, after drying it is resistant to

swelling or shrinkage due to climate changes, it is extremely durable and resistant after some

preservation treatments, it has a very fine grain, allowing it to come in different styles. Bamboo which is

an excellent material for eco-friendly furniture products has been drawn as a green building material. It

decreases the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide which is the main reason for global warming

(Yiping et al. 2010).

The methodology not only helped realize and organize the key features required to build certain forms

but also expanded the horizon of understanding materials and their impact on us physically as well as

psychologically. The process firmed my belief that craft is, in fact, a true reflection of a community’s

evolution and beliefs and that it must be preserved and expanded.

The Allay Chair recites a story of making and embracing furniture by a collaboration of craftsmen and

designers to be later cherished and embraced by the user. Furniture is a way of expression and the Allay

Chair delivers it poetically. As in the old days, craft provides a strong sense of social cohesion, a feeling

of shared enterprise, a commonly held set of skills and experiences. One of the most significant aspects

of creating the piece is that it can help us make better choices on how we want to live on the planet.

The manufacturing process involves the building of an aluminum frame by the simple process of

bending along the jig and then TIG welding the pieces together. The woven bamboo seat can then

either be woven on top of the structure or a pre-made woven sheet can be slit-locked in the frame for

a smooth assembly. The back of the chairs comes in cast Aluminium or Bamboo lumber which is

obtained by gluing thin layers of bamboo. This to-and-fro process is partly experimental, partly

intuitive but truly embracing the spirit of craftsmanship, shared knowledge, and creativity.

cleancontinuouscurves

valet chairwovenbends

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Allay Chair.Build to stay.

Using little to create big impacts.

Allay chair.Build to stay.

bamboo lumber backcast aluminium backash back

1” aluminium tube1” bend rattan

woven bamboo seat 22

16

14

2

17

8

7

15

173/4

31

17

14.5

15

1614

dim.

Allay Chair1unit = 1inch

Frame: TIG weld | Heat bendSeat: HandwovenBack: Lumber | Cast Aluminium

Inspired by the Valet chair by Hans Wegner, a side chair designed for leisure times. Light weight Aluminium frame with handwoven bamboo make the chair a versatile element for any space. Appropriate to be used in residential and commercial sector.

16L X 17W X 31H

PROCESS USED ALLAYCHAIR

Age proof.Water proof.Trend proof.

Continuous lines flowing together to create beautiful forms.

Not just a chair, its a statement.

natural bamboostained bamboobleached bamboocast aluminium

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Allay chair.

Allay chair.Build to stay.