Unique furniture designs on display
Furniture designed and produced by students from Victoria University features in an exhibition at the Faculty of Architecture and Design.
The exhibition, Make It, is the culmination of a summer course coordinated by interior architecture lecturer Natasha Perkins, where students engaged with industry sponsors to build a piece of furniture from start to completion.
“Students get to progress a design from a theoretical standpoint through to a prototype by engaging with a client and people in the industry,” says Ms Perkins.
One student, Webber (Ping-Chun) Chen, completed the paper during an internship at an interior design and furniture firm in Taiwan.
Webber created a sculptural table, Metric-Ganic (pictured below), out of white oak and says the piece has a complex and thoughtful background.
“It represents the idea of our civilisation imprinting our knowledge onto books and how we humans shaped the earth to create our own culture and history.
“The geometric appearance of the timber panels is the representation of human knowledge based on mathematical calculations to create form,” he says.
Metric-Ganic was manufactured in Taiwan before being shipped to New Zealand for the exhibition.
Webber says it was an intense experience working in real industry and he noticed the difference between being a student on internship and an actual designer.
“A student needs to learn all the details of how to make furniture from the designer, whereas the designer tries to clear their mind of any influences to make the design unique, kind of like a student.”
The Make It exhibition, sponsored by Wellington furniture company Metal Art Ltd, is open to the public at the Te Aro Campus, from 8.30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, until 28 February.
