Posts Tagged ‘industrial’

My homemade pipe stool

November 13th, 2015

Pipe stool
 

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about design, and specifically how the environments we encounter can suggest that one take a certain course of action. By keeping my shoes near the door to my apartment for my own convenience I’d accidentally created a bad design — a situation that subtly suggested one should remove one’s shoes, but didn’t offer any place to sit while doing so.

I honestly don’t care if people remove their shoes or not but I want people to feel welcome if I’ve inadvertently suggested it. What I needed was a place to sit.

Yeah, I mean I could have just bought a chair or a stool, or even found one on Craigslist. But that’s no fun.

Loosely following the design from this blog post I bought some iron pipe fittings at the hardware store and for the seat I purchased a tree slice from Amazon. I removed loose bark from the tree slice and applied a few layers of spray-on lacquer.

The pipes were more of a challenge. After a couple hours of wrestling with heavy iron pipes (and getting a few bruises along the way) I managed to get the pipes locked tightly into place. Then it was simply a matter of adjusting the caps at the bottom until the thing was level, and the floor flanges on the top so they were all level with the seat.

A few screws later, and I had a most unusual homemade stool. But most of all I solved a small design problem I’d accidentally created in my own living space.

Four Barrel’s new parklet

June 25th, 2011

Four Barrel's parklet Four Barrel's parklet Four Barrel's parklet Four Barrel's parklet
 

Four Barrel opened their new parklet today. There’s a wood bar to hold your beverages, a brick flooring, and a bike rack in the middle. The design fits the Four Barrel industrial-brown aesthetic and looks like it should last. All they need now are some climbing plants to grow over the metal trellises.