Phone Booth for Coworking Space

The evolution of the design for the Workantile phone booth project has been far more convoluted than expected. Flat-pack plywood wasn’t the initial concept (and, in fact, I tried to avoid that early on). But the elegance of working with just one material, and of having fewer pieces to assemble, makes this seem like the right way to go. One of the design goals for it was that it be something that could be reasonably easily assembled, and the flat-pack design should be that.

Members at Workantile are excited about it, too. There was an internal kickstarter (has kickstarter already become a generic term for crowd-source fundraiser?) to raise the funds for building the initial prototype. This includes materials costs as well as some funds for a one-month membership at Maker Works in order to do the fabrication of the pieces. It was announced on Tuesday afternoon, and now, just a couple days later, it has already met its goal.

On Thursday, at lunch, I presented some of the concepts that are still under consideration. Since it has evolved into an essentially all-plywood design, it became clear that the window openings for the booth could be *anything*. There’s no need for it to be rectangular windows. Typical muntins are linear because they are built-up stick construction. The windows for this are going to be cutouts in wood panels, so it’s a completely different kind of fabrication. The two layers also do not to match each other, so there can be some play between the interior and exterior. Some of the examples for window options include the Millenium Falcon (which is also a sort of Art Nouveau look), a Penrose tiling, and a gear pattern. These are being considered by the Workantile membership, and there will be a final discussion and vote once it’s ready to go to fabrication.

The overall evolution of the design has been interesting. I’ve worked with concepts for this using both steel framing as well as wood. I also looked at a plywood flat-pack version, but at first just as a notional concept, rather than as a real direction for the project. It didn’t seem right to experiment with the ShopBot without any experience with previous projects, although that is the solution that has finally been selected.

The first concept for the phone booth was a steel frame with glass panels, using structural sections (steel angles and the like). However, steel has proved to be very expensive, even for a more simplified option. Then, it seemed that wood frame was going to be the way it needed to go. Using a steel baseplate seemed like a good option that would allow experimentation with different kinds of walls and structure. The metal base would be re-usable, even if the phone booth required a design change. But that would make it a design with multiple materials (which makes fabrication more difficult to coordinate, since it requires multiple sources). A kit of steel parts would be fairly straightforward, but that’s going to be left for version 2.0.

So now, the design is an all-plywood version that only requires some fasteners and a couple of short lengths of 2x lumber, along with the glazing and the curtain and curtain rod. All in all, it’s pretty minimal.

In addition to getting it fabricated, there will also be a public kickstarter to do some further development and refinement of the design and to make the plans available to other coworking spaces and other places that have a need for a small, private booth of this sort.

 

The Workantile Phone Booth

Another furniture project is moving forward.

Today, I met with the Workantile maintainers group to discuss the phone booth. They were uniformly in favor of moving forward with it, so we are going to build a demonstration version to try out some of the materials and to get a sense of how the whole things may work. I posted some earlier images (on G+) of the phone booth concept for a glass door version. This updated one (click on images for larger versions) envisions a bi-fold wooden door with glass or polycarbonate infill panels.

A shared workspace like Workantile can sometimes be a hard place to work when you need to have phone conversations. I’ve seen times here when it has been so busy that the phone room (we only have the one right now) and all the other remote places and corners that people typically retreat to in order to talk on the phone were in use. A small phone booth will offer some acoustic separation so that more people can have phone conversations without disrupting the rest of the space. Although it’s being designed for use in a coworking space, there are probably lots of other places where something like this would be useful.

The first phase of this is going to be an internal Kickstarter to build one model and see how it works in practice here at Workantile. The first one is not going to be the all-steel frame version, for now. But we’ll do it with some materials we have available and on-hand, like some wire-glass for the side panels, and that will give us a chance to try it with different materials. Door options may include a cloth curtain, a wood bi-fold door with some kind of vision panes, a salvaged wood door we have with full-lite glass, and the all-glass door (shower door style, with the sexy stainless-steel hinges).

From that, we’re probably going to be running a Kickstarter project to fund development, refine the design, and build a couple further examples. The plan is to eventually make the plans for it open-source, but supporters of the Kickstarter wil lhave a chance to have a say in the features incorporated into the base design. Among the options I would like to make available for premiums at higher levels will be customization consultation (for organizations and people who would like their own version of this, but with some modifications; the industrial aesthetic is ideal for Workantile, but it may not be for everyone) and a full, pre-manufactured version of it, including all the pieces necessary for building one of these packaged up and shipped to someone who wants to buy one and put it together as an off-the-shelf system (much like an Ikea product, but presumably somewhat more robust). Another Kickstarter option might be to request a particular feature be incorporated as part of the set of plans. I don’t think we’ll have a fully pre-assembled version available, but if there’s enough call for it, that could be another possibility, I suppose.

The whole thing will probably be a couple months away, once we’ve had a chance to try it out and see how the basic version works.

 

Project Completion – L/S Shelf

With buildings, the completion comes more slowly, and things need to be tweaked and balanced, whereas, with furniture, it’s more of a binary proposition. Of course, even in this case, there’s a bottom shelf to be adjusted a little bit, and the one cable needs to have a little more attention.  But, substantially, the L/S shelf is completed and assembled.  More importantly, and a vital concern for these clients, it was completed in time for their huge holiday party, which takes place next weekend.

The final assembly compares pretty well with the rendering.  For now, the steel is just gray; we weren’t able to get this done in stainless.  Later this winter, the plan is to disassemble the whole thing, and have the frame finished in some manner (probably powder coating, but maybe galvanizing) and make any other adjustments that need to be done.  Mike also wants to touch up the wood finish at that time, though it was fun to see everyone petting the new furniture once we had it up.

It took a little more fussing and adjusting than an IKEA shelf would for us to assemble it, although I did give the 1/2″ Allen wrench to the clients (it’s for the socket head screws connecting the arms to the base), but then we squared it up and leveled it much more carefully than just putting together an IKEA project.

That said, though, I think that this could be done as a kit shelf.  It’s a bit of an undertaking to put it all together, and needs a bit more ability than just putting together commercial furniture.  Locally, I’m sure something could be arranged for us to come and assemble it.  Shipping the pieces would be a possibility, too, though the steel pieces are not light.  The modular nature of it also makes it possible to come up with other material choices for the shelves other than the wood (though I do really like to combination of steel and birch).

Thanks to Klapperich Welding (steel fabrication), Kessler Design + Build (wood shelves and installation assistance), Gyfford Productions (cable assemblies), Stadium Hardware (connection hardware).  Better pictures will be forthcoming, as well.  This was just the quick and dirty point and shoot as we were putting it together.

 

Shelf Project Progress

I had hoped to have the L/S Shelves installed this weekend. Ideally, the shelves were going to be completed and installed for Thanksgiving, since they had guests coming for the holiday. But with family commitments and other delays, it didn’t work out that way. Fortunately, getting it done for Thanksgiving would have only been a bonus, and not the real deadline for the project, so no one was disappointed.

Instead, we got together on Saturday to get it assembled and see how it looked – at least that was the plan.

The arms and the base went together without problems. I’ve been able to locate stainless steel hardware for all the parts I wanted for this. And I really like the socket head screws (allen head screws) as the connectors. No one (or at least only a very few people) will ever notice them, since they’ll be mostly hidden by the shelves, but I’m glad I went with the more industrial aesthetic.

When Mike got there, he only had one of the four shelves with him, because he had been having trouble with getting the last coats of finish on the shelves. We still set it in place, and were trying to get a sense of how it would all go together, and at least get the cables installed on it when we discovered a problem. While trying to get it level, we were checking various measurements to get the arms even, and the top was not measuring close to the right length. After checking around some more, we discovered that the contractor had built the base as a 5′ wide base, rather than as a 6′ wide base. So, even if he’d brought them all, the shelves wouldn’t match the frame. We discussed the options for how we would go about fixing it. Eventually, it seemed to make sense that keeping it with the smaller base was better for the space, and the two lamps that are eventually to go in on either side of the shelves, as well.

The problem was a change between the preliminary design that was used to get the job quoted and the final drawings with the additional details that I included. The steel fabricator built the base off the preliminary, rather than the final drawings. As a result, Mike is going to adjust the shelves to be a foot shorter than what he originally built. So the finished version of this prototype will have 4 shelves ranging from 5′ to 7′ in length, instead of 6′ to 8′.

We are also going to modify the configuration of the cables slightly. It’s the kind of thing that probably needed to be seen in the space, with the actual materials in place. It would be fine as originally designed, but I think the look with the adjustment we’re going to make will make it even better. The arms aren’t even in the photo, but this was a look at the revised cable configuration, which we’ll complete when we put in the shelves. Wood should be finished and we’ll take a second turn at getting it all put together later this coming week.