AGORA
Agora was a short summer project in cooperation with Iowa Prison Industries (IPI). The aim of the project was to create a product that could be made from the sign material they currently stock. Iowa Prison Industries is the maker of street signs for all over the state these include basic traffic signs to large scale highway signs. They also create and sell furniture to parks, schools, and cities. IPI would choose two of the products from class to move forward with and prototype at their manufacturing facility in Anamosa.
How might we design a piece of furniture made from reclaimed wood materials for city plazas that is..
From the initial ideation we arrived at 3 concepts that we believed had the most potential. We then began refining and testing these concepts to see which would work and which would not. We ended up using sections of type B signage put together with what we were calling wedges. We also added the option of an end cap with a vertical garden, though we believed the cap could have multiple options.
Our initial final idea was Agora, as seen below. It was one of the two ideas that IPI had decided to move forward with and create a prototype. The concept ended up being very simplistic, cost effective, and highly aesthetic. From here we began creating a tech pack for manufacturing so that IPI could build it.
The bench makes use of rain water while keeping the seat dry. Rainwater (denoted by blue) is sent to a gutter type system at the base of the seat where it is channeled into the side of the bench where the vertical garden would be located if there is no vertical garden it will simply run off to the ground, keeping the seat dry.
Refinement involved making Agora manufacturable in IPI’s current facilities. This required a few changes to the frame and thus the overall form. We ended on two ideas, one similar to our original design (2) and another that was more geometric and simpler to manufacture (3).
