Outdoor Furniture Design
Project Summary
In this project, we were tasked with building a piece of furniture for the San Marin campus. I was placed in a group with three other peers for this project. We decided to build a bench design that included four planter boxes. The process for this project included blueprints, a 3D model, a slideshow presentation, and a table displaying the total cost of each type of wood, as well as a cut list.
Blueprints, Costs & Materials
To the left is the primary page of our blueprints. It includes a front/side view, a bottom view, and a back view. Our bench, plus the planter boxes, has a total length of 5 feet, height of of 32 inches, and depth of 2 feet. with a total height of These three detailed drawings come together to form a clear, easy to follow, and doable design for our bench. Our bench would spend a total of 121 dollars on wood. With the addition of screws, this would bring it up to the reasonable price of nearly 133 dollars. Below are some additional views of our 3D Model. Here is our 3D model link: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/jc7J8mScStj-frantic-lahdi/edit?returnTo=%2Fdashboard
Infrastructure Content:
Sun angles - Because our bench incorporates plants, we wanted it to recieve some sun exposure, but not to much. This would be ideal for both people sitting on it and the growing plants. In the area that we wanted this bench to go, my group noticed that it seemed to get even amounts of sun and shade throughout the day.
Human use patterns - When walking from class to class, I noticed that the area outside of the music room often gets congested. Due to the lack of seating arrangements, people often get accidentally pushed into the mud when the sidewalks get crowded. On top of that, we noticed students sitting on the stairs and railings without proper seating. These patterns helped us determine where our bench would be actually used and make an impact on the school.
Material Choice - We used 4 different types of wood in our bench. We used smooth heart redwood for the areas with human contact, pressure treated wood for areas that come in contact with the ground, we used whitewood, our cheapest option, for the framing under the bench, and lastly we used a tempered hardboard panel for the planter boxes. The tempered hardboard panel has the same effect as the pressure treated wood in which it will not degrade in the soil.
Blueprinting - I developed three pages (each front and back) of blueprints for this project. They included basic pictures of our design, a step by step building process, zoomed in images of corners, joints, and supports, and a cut list.
Modeling - Another member of our group made our cardboard model, while I created the 3D model on TinkerCad. Both came out reasonably well and aligned with one another. We struggled with adding details to our cardboard model because the more details we added, the more messy the cardboard seemed.
Budgeting - We researched our budget on the Home Depot website. I found each type of wood, its size, and its cost. Compared to other designs, I was impressed at how cheap our bench came out to be.
Reflection
In this project, I did a good job of managing the workload of the project. I immediately took a leadership role in the group and contributed to the majority of the work. I did the slideshow, blueprints, budget, material table, and 3D model all by myself. On the other hand, I could have done a better job of collaborating with my teammates over the break. That was when I did a lot of work on my own, and we could have communicated and all pitched in more. Additionally, I could talked more to my groupmates. A lot of this project was my group working by ourselves. It could have been more efficient if we each completed a delegated task and helped eachother out.