FURNITURE DESIGN
Furniture & mechanism design
American Walnut Chess Table
A shared activity, a compact footprint and a mechanism developed through making.
THE PROJECT
I designed this dark American walnut chess table around a brief to bring family members together while using space efficiently. The project connects a physical piece of furniture with detailed studies of its collapsible base and concealed mechanisms.
01 / THE PROCESS
Starting with a shared activity
Chess gave the brief a clear purpose: a reason for people to sit together around one object. I developed the table as both a playing surface and a piece of furniture, considering how the circular top, recessed board and supporting base would read as a complete design.
The broad timber rim frames the playing area. Its grain remains a prominent part of the finished object, giving the table a different character from the more technical drawings used to develop it.
02 / THE PROCESS
A form that accommodates movement
The design brings together a segmented top, an engraved chessboard and a collapsible lattice base. The repeated crossing members give the base its distinctive appearance while making movement part of the furniture itself.
I worked through the relationships between these components in plan and elevation. These development views helped describe where parts met, where they needed room to move and how the mechanism could sit beneath the playing surface.
03 / THE PROCESS
Resolving the concealed mechanism
The mechanism studies include stainless-steel iris leaves and an actuator arrangement. Model testing exposed a friction problem: rotating the top could also turn the wider assembly. That finding made the relationship between the moving surface and the supporting base a specific design problem.
I explored a slot and locking arrangement within the base, alongside support for the central column. These proposals aimed to control unwanted movement while keeping the additional components beneath the main body of the table.
04 / THE PROCESS
Design information for manufacture
I produced working drawings in 2-D Design, with their use in laser cutting, CAD/CAM and router templates in mind. The manufacturing approach considered jigs for repeatable parts and how several components could be arranged together on a sheet.
The project was designed with batch manufacture in mind. Nested cutting layouts and component drawings helped me examine repeatable manufacture, sheet layout and construction details before committing each part to manufacture.
DETAIL DEVELOPMENT
From the drawing
to the object.
OUTCOME
The work, brought together.
The finished table and its development drawings show two sides of the project: the material character of a piece of furniture and the less visible work needed to resolve its moving parts. It is a useful example of how I connect form, mechanism studies and practical design information.
View the PostGRAD portfolioProject record
- PostGRAD Schemes Portfolio2.pdf · 11–12
- Working Drawings - CAD images.docx · 1
- User-supplied photographs and project description · Material and completed-table images