Furniture

For this project, I decided to make a wall partition, or a wall divider - whatever you want to call it. I watch a lot of television (I'm a cinema studies, MCM concentrator... it's a good excuse), and during the day the sunlight makes it difficult to watch the screen. Building a wall partition that would be able to block enough sunlight to improve the picture of the television seemed like a good solution to this problem. I also have a fair amount of clutter in the living room in my apartment, and I wanted to make something that would to hide the suitcases, boxes, etc. that are shoved against the wall next to my TV. These objects, however, do not reach as high as the television, and placing the partition directly in front of them would significantly reduce the amount of sunlight that is able to enter the room - something that is not desirable when I am not watching TV. So, the idea that the partition should have moving parts that would make its height alterable was introduced into my thought process.

I ended up constructing a freestanding rectangular wooden frame out of the split two by fours in to which I slid a series of shapes that were meant to approximate wood grain. These shapes were chosen in an attempt to make the OSB more attractive and more easily identifiable as wood.

Ultimately, however, I feel that the project was an aesthetic failure. Or, perhaps not a complete aesthetic failure. There are definitely some interesting and salvageable ideas in the piece that could be made visually appealing, but they require some refinement. If I were to re-do the project, there are a number of things that might be done to improve the appearance of the wall divider.

1) I could paint the OSB (and possibly the wood frame as well) various colours. If I were to do this, however, I would probably choose to cut the OSB into different shapes, since the wood grain shapes would become irrelevant (the wood that they refer to would no longer be exposed).

2) I could use different, more attractive wood for the central panel.

3) I could cut the OSB into geometric shapes such as rectangles. Such shapes, which might be removed and rearranged without much difficulty, would make it easier to play with the texture and "transparency" of the screen, making it less clunky-looking.

All in all, however, I enjoyed working with the wood (especially being able to use the power tools), hearing feedback from my peers (they had lots of good ideas), and seeing all of the other furniture. I'm looking forward to the "human form" assignment, and hope my collaboration with Zach turns out a little better than the wall partition I built by myself!