Architecture-Turning Japanese

An idea I had after staying at a hotel with Japanese style beds. While I like the look and design of Japanese beds, I find them uncomfortable to sleep in because they’re so hard. So, I had the idea of getting the Japanese look, but with the comfort of a regular mattress.

This enlarged bed that I came up with could either be considered a type of four-poster bed, or the design could be extended to fill a whole room, making it Interior design.

The mattress sits on a low frame on the floor, a platform is then raised to the same level as the top of the mattress and finished with tatami mats. This gives the look that the bed is a lot thinner than it really is. The tatami mat platform can have hinged doors built into it, giving a large amount of storage underneath the raised platform.

The sides of the platform are finished with Japanese style wood and paper screens, that can be used either as a simple wall covering or doorway into the bed space, or can be utilised to keep furnishings hidden from view when not in use, a wall mounted television for example, or a built in closet. The screens can also be used in place of curtains or blinds in front of a window or balcony door. The elements of the bed design can be used to fit the space, regardless of its shape or size, making it a cheap and versatile interior system.

Furniture Design-Roll out the barrel

I mentioned a chair made from a barrel in one of my earlier posts, well here is the design in a little more detail.

The idea behind the design was to come up with a different way to use old beer/wine barrels in a bar setting where space was a priority. Here in Taiwan, seeing these barrels made into tables is quite common, and I felt that I didn’t want to repeat an existing design.

So I took the barrel and cut it in half, not a straight cut, but a stepped cut, this gives me a chair shape that includes the seat area and the backrest. All with one cut, on one barrel, giving me two chairs! So the basic design is quick, simple and efficient. To finish the chair a single disk of wood can be used, the disk can have the half of the edge cut off of it and be slotted into the barrel to make the seat, while the off-cut can be fixed to the top of the backrest. Finish the chair with a round-buttoned cushion.

The added benefit of this design is that for storage or alternative use, two chairs can be put back together like the original barrel to save space, or to be used as a barstool with the seat/backrest lip becoming the footrest of the barstool.

So one barrel equals two chairs, easy storage and one barstool.

Architecture-Old English/New Taiwan

An interior design project that was done for a friend. They wanted to open a bar/restaurant/office/art gallery here in Taipei, but wanted it to have a ‘traditional English’ feel to it.

So with the limitations of their budget in mind as well as the restrictions to the traditional decoration methods used in British pubs. I decided that the best way to design the space was to keep the was to keep all the walls as large as possible and plain white to allow for their use to display artwork. The main bar area would contain an open kitchen space to maximise the use of space and keep uninterrupted wall space to a maximum. The office space and bathroom were pushed to the back of the space to keep them out of the way and fitted around the existing load bearing structures that were in the space.

The look of the design kept the overall inside space plain white for the art gallery function, a dark timber beam ceiling was to be installed to start the ‘traditional’ elements of the space. The main ‘traditional’ feel of the place was to come from the bar and furniture, all were to be made with a dark natural wood and finished with brass fixtures and fittings with dark red leather trim.

Some of the furniture had double uses, the chairs were specially designed to save space and were made from old beer/wine barrels, and the tables could be dismantled and the table tops used as window shutters to increase the wall space for an art show or to protect the windows in the event of a typhoon.

The office space was kept small, but the walls were lined with a grid of shelves for maximum storage space. The shelves actually wrapped around the window or the office and one section of shelf extended into the middle of the room to create the offices communal desk, capable of seating three workers at a time.

The bathroom was specifically given a male and female area, unlike some shared bathrooms found in Taipei. With special care given to the facilities provided for the female bathroom, giving it more space and more than the minimum single toilet cubicle. All bathrooms were finished with an art deco black and white tile pattern and brass fixtures to give a classic and classy look.