Objects: furniture
I design things to support my work and others: exhibitions, architecture, furniture, hardware, and graphics. Making is a form of study—combining traditional techniques with new technologies to find low-cost, DIY methods that yield surprising qualities. I like artifacts that straddle boundaries: virtual/physical, analogue/digital, traditional/progressive.
About
I design things to support my work and others: exhibitions, architecture, furniture, hardware, and graphics. Making is a form of study—combining traditional techniques with new technologies to find low-cost, DIY methods that yield surprising qualities. I like artifacts that straddle boundaries: virtual/physical, analogue/digital, traditional/progressive.
Lil Lamp
A small lamp designed with Taisuke Wakabayashi.
Lil Table
A small console table for an amplifier. 3D printed legs on a recycled cabinet door top.
Hifi System
An all-in-one wall mounted hifi system optimized for a digital collection, using a pipe-bending jig and brass dowels to make a simple but striking shape. Images of the design can be seen here.
Arcade Cabinet
An arcade cabinet designed for exhibiting contemporary art games. The key detail is a fabrication method I developed for creating a perfect, CRT-style curved lens to place over a modern flat-panel screen. The technique adapts the principles of liquid-mirror telescopes: first, liquid silicone is spun in a dish to form a perfect parabolic mold; then, epoxy is poured into the stationary mold to cast the lens. While this fabrication method is developed and ready, the project is currently shelved, awaiting grant funding to produce a full-scale prototype.
Staked Desk
A poplar standing desk built using the "baton" pattern from Christopher Schwarz's The Anarchist's Design Book. The project was an exercise in this craft philosophy, continuing my use of a simple and robust staked-leg joinery technique seen in two earlier projects. The result is a functional piece of workshop furniture built around a joint I keep coming back to.
Guccibytes
An exhibition and print zine showcasing unfinished speculative pieces from our studio organization, Quipit, with a focus on revealing the often-unseen digital components of our work. The zine was printed on long scrolls wrapped around PVC lattices, with embedded QR codes linking to AR content in Wikar. Each contributor used the platform differently: some created virtual galleries, others showed complex models on virtual plinths, and I created a "3D portal" to show one of my miniature models staged in its fictional setting. The physical exhibition components were built from materials recycled from a previous project.
Love Bench
Revisiting a concept from the Archon Studio, the Love Bench was designed as playful, interlocking, multipurpose furniture. It solves three needs: a bench near the door for putting on shoes (with storage underneath), a sturdy weight-lifting bench that avoids the typically ugly aesthetic of exercise equipment, and extra guest seating when pulled apart into stools. The interlinked design provides 8 staked legs for support in its bench configuration, allowing it to take a significant load.
CNC Chair
A prototype chair based on the dimensions of an Eames LCW, fabricated from scrap plywood using a Shaper Origin handheld CNC. The design was modified to focus on joinery, angles, and tolerances suitable for CNC cutting and to accept a recycled foam cushion. An unproduced second pass on the design featured more rounded, friendly ergonomics; this iteration is visualized over photos of the original chair using my augmented reality app, Wikar. Justin McCallister is photographed sitting.
Staked Bench
A solid maple bench with a CNC milled and hand-refined form. This piece was a key deliverable for the Archon Studio, a funded competition where students design a house and matching furniture that embodies a particular concept of dwelling. This bench was designed for my house entry, '12 Miles a Year'. The staked furniture technique was later revisited for the 'Staked Desk' project, though it was not affiliated with the studio.
Digital Picnic
A suspended holo-deck-like structure using projectors and a USB controller to adjust the environment with various images, patterns, and colors. I contributed production, assembly, conceptualization, and created visuals and an interactive controller using Arduino and Max/MSP, working with Christian Pepper and Robert Prochaska. We ultimately repurposed the installation into permanent furniture.
Bezeliness Intensifies
A series of light sculptures and pen-plotted transparent graphics exploring the aesthetics of frames and bezels through space-filling curves, packing algorithms, and reaction-diffusion simulations. The work blended 3D printing, pen plotting, reactive lighting, and other digital production techniques. It was installed in three locations: the UIUC School of Architecture, the Broadway Food Hall, and a six-month window display on Urbana's main street.
Quipit Student Survey
A participatory table installation in the school's atrium that challenged passersby with the question: What would you change if you ran the school? Over a month, the table filled with students' handwritten responses. QUIPIT—a student group in the University of Illinois' School of Architecture, with Ray Majewski, Christian Pepper, and Robert Prochaska—then held a student event to discuss the responses and presented findings to the school's director. Part of our ongoing use of tongue-in-cheek installation art to open conversation among students, faculty, and administration.