CONFLUENCE will be submitting a piece of furniture created from salvaged drawers available for purchase in a silent auction fund raiser to benefit Perennial.

At Lost + F(o)und you can Drink, Donate & Discover DIY sustainable design in a county fair style event. Cast your vote in our silent auction of furniture created from salvaged drawers by local artists, designers, and architects. Sample fine cheeses, wine, and craft beer from local breweries while enjoying folk music played on upcycled instruments by Green Strum. Grab your friends and make a coffee cup sleeve from old bike tubing or visit our educational display to see Perennial’s magical transformation of broken junk into unique home goods! Watch for updates on this fabulous green event through our website, email, and awesome posters designed by local artist Dan Zettwoch.

The event is on Thursday, October 6th from 6 to 8:30 pm at Bridge, 1004 Locust Ave, Saint Louis, MO.  Tickets

We will see you there!

Plywood is a manufactured sheet good consisting of wood plies laminated together.  Each ply is a thin layer of wood cut by rotating the tree round about its center.  It is a versatile wood product because of its strength, durability, affordability, dimensional stability, and resistance to bending and cracking.

These qualities come from plywood’s laminated construction and the alternating grain direction of each ply.  The nature of the composition, though, brings with it an aesthetic concern in that the grains and plies can create a conflicting, disjointed presentation if they are not handled sensitively.  Typically, this edge condition is hidden.  On the other hand, this characteristic can be a distinctive opportunity to integrate the grain and ply into the design for a cohesive and consistent project.  For example, consistent vertical grains, like the birch plywood used in the Meyr apartment paneling serve to elongate the space, making the ceiling feel taller than it is.  This illustrates the effectiveness of unified wood grain across an apartment.  What is interesting with plywood, though, is that it can maintain its effectiveness as a material even when qualitative differences become desired across a project.  Essentially, one material of the same piece of plywood can be thought of to have up to four face appearances, making it a much more dynamic design medium than traditional lumber products.

With this in mind, examining a product such as the chess board becomes an interesting activity.  Traditionally, chess sets are composed of white and black tiles with matching pieces.  Obviously, this practice has countless exceptions, but fundamentally, the distinction between one set of pieces and the other set demands either a change in material or an additive finish or paint.  This is where the characteristics of plywood become advantageous.  By utilizing the composition of plywood, an entire chess set can be made from a single material by exploiting the contrast within the material.  The tiles and pieces have qualitative differences in that the grain pieces and ply pieces remain visually distinct, but are fundamentally the exact same material.

Check out a video of the Baltic Birch Chess Set and its sliding compartments.

Recently, Confluence toured Spec-Rite Designs, a company specializing in phenolic panel fabrication.  Phenolic panels are a paper-based material consisting of dyed kraft paper core which is heat-pressed together, forming a composite structural panel.  A decorative surface print sandwiches the core papers, giving the face numerous options in appearance; with choices of color, patterns, granite, or wood grain.  Melamine resin coats the panel, resulting in a scratch- and water-resistant, durable material, with an option of UV coating for exterior use.  We’re essentially talking Chuck Norris meets David Hasselhoff.  The dyed kraft paper allows for core color options as well as a large range of thicknesses.  The decorative surface print becomes advantageous for easy customization.  This manufactured material has the potential to be an elegant method for a more integrated, material-based form of design.

The absence of a wood core substrate like that found in traditional sheet goods makes the composite material of phenolic panels more durable.  Problems such as bubbling, moisture absorption, and delamination are avoided while the panels can remain thin and strong.  This makes phenolic panels optimal for wet or humid applications, in addition to cabinetry and storage units.  The strength of the panels allows for large spans and minimal connections.  The nature of the material permits routing and milling while maintaining the structural integrity of the panel.  Combining different colors of dyed kraft paper gives the core a striped pattern, where in turn the surface can be milled to reveal these colors and create an interesting face design.

Fabrication with phenolic panels, though, has gone largely under-designed as of yet.  Currently, locker rooms, bathroom partitions, countertops, chemistry labs and office desks have been the main applications associated with this material.  In most cases, though, these designs are typically pedestrian in their execution.  A durable, water-resistant material with the ability for long spans, thin profiles, allowable apertures  and easy customizations is an impressive list of qualities.  These inherit characteristics, combined with currently in-use digital fabrication techniques, offer the opportunity to explore new designs using the material for concrete mold construction, indoor and outdoor furniture, and a variety of other sculptural applications.

Designers have the opportunity to explore the boundaries of phenolic panels.  We have seen its beneficial characteristics and basic applications, and can now begin to introduce it as a material choice in the design world.

Age: 30

Born: Richmond, VA, USA by way of Phildelphia

Favorite Color: Gray (these days)

Favorite Designer: Eero Saarinen

Favorite Material: Wood

Favorite Design Movement: Vienna Secession Movement

Peter Hughes, architect and engineer of Highway Energy Systems, has designed an interesting way of harnessing a car’s kinetic energy and transforming it into mechanical energy, making it available for electrical power.  His electro-kinetic speed bump captures the wasted energy from vehicles slowing down and converts it to usable power.  Much like a hamster running unattached to a light source, we currently use cars as pure expenditures of energy.  To continue the analogy, though, these speed bumps have the ability to function as the wires connecting the hamster wheel to the light bulb.  Cars and trucks simply being driven, maintaining a normal day’s behavior, now provide power for their ongoing activities.  Hughes’ speed bump implementation requires no additional input once the mechanisms are in place – life continues on as usual, except with more power sources, and a constant flow of renewable energy. The speed bump is not the only place we can search for extra energy; here are a few other precedents around the world where kinetic energy has begun to be captured:

click on the image to learn more about energy-harnessing precedents around the world

As the technology emerges to improve the efficiency of existing systems, so do the opportunities for design.  A house, for example, can respond to its occupant in a much more direct way.  As an inhabitant walks up the stairs, the piezoelectric inserts on each step can recognize the direction of motion and transmit power from the first to second floor.  As the owner moves into the living room, the gentle depression in the floor can power the lights and start a fan.  As the occupant moves to the couch and sits, the television or reading light could switch on, being powered by the kinetic energy of the move.  Energy harnessers are advantageous for alternative energy hunters, but can be even more intriguing for dynamic designers, giving them the ability to interconnect the used and the user.

Electro-kinetic converters provide the opportunity to create a more dynamic environment that responds to its occupants in real time. Furthermore, where products are usually built independent of larger schemes, it is exciting to think that design could be headed towards a practice of more interconnected mechanisms throughout an entire complex.  While the technology may not be quite all the way there, designers should start preparing for a field with much more dynamic possibilities. Design has the opportunity to integrate the built and the inhabitant, creating something akin to a an intelligent machine for living.

Age: 21

Born: Durham, NC, USA

Favorite Color: Red

Favorite Designer: Arne Jacobsen

Favorite Material: Plexiglas

Kevin is also a varsity soccer player who scored four goals last season and earned three yellow cards and one red card (all were cases of referee bias).