More often than not, two car households would talk about their first car being a requirement, but their second car as a convenience.

The word ‘convenience’ stuck with me, forming the project into an exploration of how we could develop a transportation method that combines the benefits of owning and riding a bike (such as avoiding traffic, getting exercise, and easy parking) with the convenience typically associated with a second car.

Ultimately, this concept aims to support the individual conveniences offered by the second car, including ample luggage space for items like sports gear, as well as pockets for smaller items usually kept in a car's centre console or on the passenger seat.

For this reason, the luggage area can be collapsed or expanded at any time, released with the push of a lever on the handlebar. This means you can effortlessly take your backpack, coat and keys to work in the morning, and not have to worry when you forgot that you needed to do your family’s weekly shop on the way home.

Yes, you could take your regular items in a pannier bag, or buy a bottle holder for your water, but that isn’t convenient.

Instead, this concept aims to suitably carry your everyday ‘things’ without having to go out of your way at any point in time.

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Over time chairs haven’t really changed. Since this style of chair was created, upholstery has been permanently stapled in place to keep manufacturing costs low.

People could have a completely new aesthetic with minimal effort and cost. There would be much less furniture waste. There is even possibility to create a market for buying and selling lower-cost covers. Heck, even an entirely new ecosystem can be created based off changing this one archetype.

this chair is an exploration into what the next step towards this ecosystem could look like.

The simple two-part design allows it to still feel like a traditional chair, while also overcoming many of the difficulties found in traditional upholstery. It is also as easy as possible for the consumers to remove and install, yet offers an equivalent finish to the current chairs.

While not shown in the photos, the ambition is to use magnets to join both sections along the exposed flange, and will be my next steps in developing this concept.

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what could the future of physical craft look like?

When you strip its beauty back, there was no logical reason for me to make a butterfly joint using traditional craft methods. It takes a massive amount of time and effort, and there are many other joints that can create a stronger 90-degree connection. Despite this, I just kept coming back to it.

am I just weird?

The process of making traditional Japanese joints allowed me to experience the feeling of finely tuned traditional tools. Each cut on the pull of the sword-style handle, every piece of timber shaved with the freshly sharpened chisel. Each motion giving a feeling of calm.

It taught me that craft is the understanding and relationship that is built over time. It is the empathy to your tools and materials. It is the years of labour to finally achieve a result that looks absolutely perfect. 

maybe I‘m not weird after all.

Although modern processes have little satisfaction, craft can still be found. It could be in the details of using software, or in optimally setting up a machine to best achieve the outcome. Modern craft is simply having the same empathy for what’s inside the ‘black box’ of digital processes, as using traditional tools.

In all of this, there is still calm that comes with making. It is just found in different forms.

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‘Hail and Ride’ is a section of bus route that do not have dedicated bus stops.

The poor integration with travel apps and internal bus screens that people new to the area experience, means it is often difficult for these to catch the bus, and know where they can be dropped off.

even locals are often unsure where the bus route is.

When investigating this issue, we found the real issues with Hail and Ride stem from problems with: accessibility, consistency, and passenger confidence.

ultimately, this made an unpleasant experience for passengers.

We proposed a commentary on these issues of Hail and Ride, creating a retrofit bench that is supposed to help improve experience, but installed at height to ensure the passenger can see the bus approaching. The installation height was also intended to highlight the accessibility issues that passengers face, making it out of reach for many.

Special thanks to the rest of the team: Nikolai Aarre, Amelia Wong, and Zhixi Dai.

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As part of owning a commercial van, it is accepted that some ‘normal’, yet surprising features will not have been installed. One of the more surprising features that are rarely installed are sunvisors with vanity mirrors, with a horrible-feeling blank sunvisor put in as their replacement.

For many van owners, these sunvisors are one of the first things they have high hopes to change. That is until they actually look for replacements.

The only option for owners in this situation is to attempt source a set of sunvisors from the higher-spec vans, that are not only extremely rare and expensive, but have comically small vanity mirrors and look equally as cheap as the standard sunvisors.

To overcome this issue, I wanted to create my own vanity mirror assembly that’s designed to be manufactured and retrofit into a modified standard sunvisor easily. This not only allowed me to increase the size of the mirror, but have full flexibility of how the mirror unit interacts with the rest of the visor.

Ultimately, I was able to push the quality of the overall sunvisor in terms mirror size, mechanism quality, manufacturing ease and designing them to have the best possible upholstery finish.

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