DI: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
: According to a report from the United Nations, 54% of the world’s overall population is urban population in 2014 and it would increase to 66% in 2050. Thus, residences in cities will keep shrinking in order to fulfill the demand. Meanwhile, social interactions become essential activities in human life in crowded settlements. Therefore, furniture is highly responsible to improve the efficiency in space-usage and hence the quality of social interactions in small properties.
DI: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
: The challenge of the project was to make it more space-efficient than usual sofa-bed and the key point was on the mechanism.
DI: What are your future plans for this award winning design?
: I will try to sell the design to a furniture company.
DI: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?
: I took around 3 months to research and the following 4 months to complete the project from idea development, sketching, modelling and making prototype. Afterwards, I kept optimising the mechanism of the design. In other words, I have taken over a year on this project already and I can say there is still a lot of potential in the design.
DI: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?
: As the residences in cities will keep shrinking whilst the urban population will not cease from growing, it must be a potential market to work on and develop more space-efficient furniture. This design first appeared in my academic project.
DI: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?
: For the exhibition in my university, I made prototypes to prove its strength and feasibility of the extension system, but it has not produced properly yet. I will try to sell the production rights to a furniture company.
DI: What made you design this particular type of work?
: I am highly committed to developing a career in furniture design and I heard that a successful furniture designer must have an iconic design of sofa or sofa bed, which was the reason I designed this sofa bed.
DI: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work?
: At university, my teachers gave me lots of comments and supports.
DI: Who is the target customer for his design?
: The target customers would be relatively young who would be students or fresh workers with low income level living in studios and 1-bedroom flats in megacities.
DI: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?
: Dimension is a small size sofa bed with unique extension system. It is able to split up into half and use individually and to transform into a 3-seater sofa, a corner sofa and 2 benches which can provide extra seats for up to 6 people; it can also improve the privacy for guests by providing twin beds opportunity. Besides, it provides pillows and bed rails which most of the current sofa-beds cannot offer.
DI: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?
: Instead of the classic way to extend from font to back, Dimension extended from both sides. It reminded me a box was a 3 dimensional object and we could play with it from different dimension. So I called it Dimension.
DI: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?
: I used pencils, AutoCAD, 3ds Max, cardboard, foam, laser cutting, my brain and my heart.
DI: What is the most unique aspect of your design?
: Dimension operates with 2-way extension system consists of 2 types of mechanism: one end is the turning mechanism and the other end is 3-step slide rails. Besides, Dimension is formed with a pair of single sofa bed, which means it is able to split up into half and use individually.
DI: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?
: My teachers gave me lots of comments and supports and Mr. Ip’s assist by giving technical advice.
DI: What is the role of technology in this particular design?
: The 2-way extension system is the spine of the sofa bed, which plays an important role in this design.
DI: Is your design influenced by data or analytical research in any way? What kind of research did you conduct for making this design?
: The research identifies through literature reviews and sampling from property agencies that the main users are relatively young who would be students or fresh workers with low income level and the target types of residence are studios and 1-bedroom flats. By interviews and online surveying, I find out that many people are willing to gather at home if the living space is used efficiently.
DI: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?
: I found that it was difficult to extend the single sofa from both sides to the size of bed and there was weak bonding through the length of bed. With the assistance of CAD models, I overcame the stretching problem with a combination of 2 types of mechanism, which was also helpful on the size-reducing.
DI: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition?
: I met a Dutch designer who won the gold award at A' Design and he recommended me to apply for it. Moreover, I always want to show this idea to public.
DI: What did you learn or how did you improve yourself during the designing of this work?
: I gained knowledge of materials and ergonomics and I learnt the industrial processes about fabric, wood, metal.