Design Case study
Design of Furniture Systems
For affordable housing - fitting more in volume
by
Introduction
The title of this project is Furniture System Design for Affordable Volumetric Housing. There is a huge shortage of housing in urban areas mainly because of shortage of
land and very high prices of the land existing. Hence there are slums that are developing in cities to accommodate the large population of immigrants coming
continuously to cities.
To overcome the housing shortage and provide good living conditions in lesser areas, Affordable housing fitting more into volume was a project carried out from July 2014 - Nov 2014 by 3 IDC students: Manu Revi, Gautham Varma and Anulal. The project dealt with creation of spaces by utilising volume and going vertical and giving exact headroom as required. Based on these studies, the minimum space required for a family of 6 members was calculated and different layouts were made for the same.
A permanent mezzanine structure in a small house might not qualify with the building bylaws of many places. Thus, if the furniture makes the mezzanine floor, it will not be considered an additional floor thus qualifying stricter bylaws.
For the current project of Furniture System design for volumetric housing, the basic concepts of spaces arranged in volumes, listing of heights and accommodating 6 people are taken from previous projects. On the basis of the previous project and current study of slums and sheet metal working, new layouts were made keeping in mind flexibility in layout and optimal utilization of spaces. The layouts created allowed various possibilities of arrangements with the same components. Then the furniture is detailed with 3 approaches: Wall-fixed furniture, Floor standing furniture and central core supporting all furniture. Throughout the project, the most important factor that was followed was keeping in mind if it could be DIY, Incremental, Economical and space saving. In many places, the weight of components and materials also was considered as it was DIY assembly and needed to be light to be easily handleable.
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