This work is dedicated to development of city furniture (station shed, bench, litter box). The first part contains the analysis of city furniture (historical, technical and design). Second part is dedicated to the design decision in particular. The main goal was to contemplate the design of station shed, which will be totally defending from bad weather; bench design, which would be impossible to be used as a ‘bed for homeless’; litter box, which would be aesthetically matching the shed and the bench. Additional task was to contemplate canopies of various sizes, enabling the city to install same type of canopies regardless of the size. The suggested design has been influenced by aesthetics, ergonomics, technology and other important aspects of industrial design.

abstract: This research aims to investigate the social environment in a brand-new type of café, pet café, and to maximum the benefit of this type of cafe. While pet cafés, especially cat cafés, are becoming increasingly common in the United States (U.S.), Asian countries have been in this kind of business since 1998. The most common and popular is the cat café. Even though the owners of cat cafés in the U.S. have learned and imitated the cat café in Asia, the cultural differences and the restrictions resulted in differences in format and design. Interior and furniture design was investigated to afford motivation to people who are pet lovers and can be potential customers. Most of the research about pets illustrates a positive influence on psychological health and social support. On the other hand, a café with pets can be attractive and interactive more than a general café, to offer a recreational activity and a comfortable social environment and therapy from pets. Juxtaposing the cat café in the U.S. against the pet café in China, is explored to investigate the difference between these countries and how they can learn from each other and make improvements to design. Research on what is the difference between the cat café in the U.S. and China are reflected on two parts of outcomes—design and business. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Design 2019

Street furniture as art in public space The thesis is about street furniture and its development in the context of history of public places in the Czech Republic. The main attention is paid to its transformation into an art form - statue, memorial or site specific. The thesis is focused on artists who work with features of street furniture and public place in the Czech Republic. How street furniture completes landscape of a city and how individual artist perceive it? The main objective of this thesis is to map these art interventions and put them into the world context. Keywords street furniture, art, public space, city, intervention, site specific

The need for sustainability, increasingly requires developing products according to a cradle to cradle approach. For furniture, wood, being potentially renewable, is a suitable material in this regard. However, most wooden furniture today utilizes steels and synthetic polymers in the joints, which can partially be recycled, but are far from being circular materials. All-wood joints have been used in traditional furniture and construction, but they are not adapted to modern manufacturing techniques and do not fulfill the need for easy assembly.  The aim of this thesis is to explore existing solutions for all-wood joints, as well as relevant manufacturing techniques to create an approach for the development of new joints by practitioners. The research questions are: What are the principles used in existing technical solutions and how can they be used to develop new all-wood furniture joints? What are the most important manufacturing techniques for wood today and how can they be considered in the early-stage development? The general approach in this thesis is to abstract the researched existing technical solutions and manufacturing techniques, ideate on this abstract level, and then detail the concepts on a more concrete level.  As results, fourteen different principles and six different patterns of transformation were extracted from existing solutions and documented in an accessible form. Similarly, seven manufacturing techniques were collected and documented. These were then used in an ideation workshop with practitioners from IKEA, which resulted in six abstract concepts. One of the concepts was further developed into a pre-design and tested with a simulations according to strength and stability requirements from applicable standards.  The testing of the pre-design proved its practicality and a team at IKEA is continuing the development of the concept and planning to manufacture a prototype. This is a good indicator for the usefulness of the approach. Even though it worked well, further exploration of the "toolbox" is recommended, as well as the use of different ideation methods. The full environmental benefits of furniture with all-wood joints are not clear, because only resource depletion was considered and the potential effect is small compared to other industries. Despite this, the thesis shows the potential in circular furniture and encourages IKEA and other furniture companies to delve into the topic of circular furniture more deeply.

Abstract Background   The furniture industry is depending on natural resources, which are threatened by both consumption and climate change. Therefore, companies need to understand their responsibility for sustainable development and preserving the resources to operate in the future. Moreover, the consumption behaviour within the furniture industry has changed drastically over the last decade. For this reason, companies could utilize ‘Green Marketing’ as a marketing tool to promote and provide consumers with the environmental benefits of products and services. However, companies need to be careful since they are at risk of being accused of greenwashing and lose consumer trust.   Purpose                      To examine how furniture companies in Sweden are using green marketing to make an impact on consumer behaviour. The research seeks to create a deeper understanding of how furniture companies are attempting to influence consumers towards a sustainable behaviour.   Method A qualitative approach was implemented by conducting five semi-structured interviews with marketing managers at furniture companies in Sweden.   Conclusion The authors have found that furniture companies aim to influence consumers towards making more sustainable choices. Furthermore, the respondents aimed to do this by applying sustainable marketing practices with an environmental focus. However, considering the theory of green marketing provided in this study, it is possible to confirm that the companies’ sustainable marketing practices cannot be defined as green marketing.

Orientador: Paula da Cruz Landim / Resumo: O mobiliário e o espaço litúrgico católico são repletos de simbolismos, os quais perduram por milênios. Criar estes espaços e móveis dotados de complexos significados, exigências e materiais que evoquem nobreza não é uma tarefa fácil para designers e arquitetos. Além disso, esta é uma área pouquíssima explorada cientificamente. Neste sentido, esta pesquisa tem por objetivo possibilitar que estes profissionais executem, com rigor semântico-simbólico, projetos de mobiliário e espaço litúrgico. Sabendo da estreita relação das áreas do Design e da Arquitetura com a linguagem simbólica dos objetos e espaços, este trabalho apresenta referencial teórico que aborda como o simbolismo fundamenta e pode ser observado nas religiões, especialmente na religião católica, já que esta é uma das poucas religiões que se utiliza de símbolos para fortalecer a fé de seus seguidores. Apresenta ainda as alterações históricas ocorridas no mobiliário litúrgico da igreja católica até a sua última grande modificação ocorrida no Concílio Vaticano II. Além disso, são descritos como o simbolismo do mobiliário litúrgico deve ser empregado dentro do espaço sagrado e como a linguagem do Design, da Semiótica e da percepção visual se fundem para embasar as interpretações estético-simbólicas. Esta pesquisa se classifica como Exploratória e Descritiva e adota Modelo de Análise Semiótica proposto por Cardoso e Pacheco (2017) para compreensão de como ocorre o processo de leitura visual e percepção do simbolismo em ... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The catholic furniture and liturgical space are full of symbolism, which last for millennia. To create these spaces and furniture with complex meanings, requirements and materials that evoke nobility is not an easy task for designers and architects. In addition, this is a scarcely scientifically explored area. In this sense, this research aims to enable these professionals to execute, with semantic-symbolic rigor, furniture and liturgical space projects. Knowing the close relationship between the areas of Design and Architecture with the symbolic language of objects and spaces, this work presents a theoretical framework that addresses how symbolism is based and can be observed in religions, especially in the Catholic religion, since this is one of the few religions that use symbols to strengthen the faith of their followers. It also presents the historical changes that occurred in the liturgical furniture of the Catholic Church until its last major change occurred in the Second Vatican Council. In addition, they describe how the symbolism of liturgical furniture must be used within the sacred space and how the language of Design, Semiotics and visual perception merge to support aesthetic-symbolic interpretations. This research is classified as Exploratory and Descriptive and adopts Semiotic Analysis Model proposed by Cardoso and Pacheco (2017) to understand how the process of visual reading and perception of symbolism occurs in relation to furniture and liturgical space. This... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

Insufficient literature exists in the area of incremental and revolutionary change to explain and predict the convergence and reorientation phenomena happening in organizations. The process of strategic reorientation involves the internal organizational complexities of fast-paced (within two years) changes in competitive strategy as a necessary condition coupled with changes in at least two of organization structure, power distribution, and control systems. Antecedent forces believed to influence the discontinuous change process include industry sales turbulence, structural inertia/firm size, firm past financial performance, CEO turnover, top management team turnover, management team heterogeneity, management environmental awareness, and external attributions for negative financial performance. Punctuated equilibrium was the foundational theory for this study in which a strategic reorientation model published in Strategic Management Journal was reconstructed. The research question was: What seem to be the significant time-based antecedent forces or conditions that lead to strategic reorientation? The study used two hierarchical logit regression models to analyze data gathered from COMPUSTAT PC Industrial Data Base and Compact Disclosure (CD-ROM) over the years 1987-1993 from the turbulent computer software and stable furniture industries. Qualitative data were found in 10-K reports and President's Letters in Annual Reports filed with the SEC and available on Laserdisclosure. The sample, exclusive of 3 multivariate outliers, included 74 software firms and 43 furniture firms for a pooled total of 117 firms. When separate industries were analyzed using the first of the Systat logit hierarchical regressions, results showed no statistically significant effects. By contrast, when data were pooled, the second hierarchical logit regression model, which included industry turbulence and firm size, showed these one-tailed statistically significant results: strategic reorientation is positively affected by prior industry turbulence and CEO turnover, but is negatively affected by prior top management team turnover and the interaction between industry turbulence and external attributions for negative financial performance.

"The adult evening home furnishings classes have placed the emphasis on consumer and homemaking aspects rather than on wage-earning aspects in the past in Pinellas County. This study will determine the number of students enrolled who are taking the class for occupational opportunities or advancement. The Adult Home Economics Department is continually evaluating and revising the curriculum to determine if it is meeting the needs of the students. This study is needed to determine the number of students enrolled in evening home furnishings classes in Pinellas County who plan to use the knowledge acquired in a wage-earning experience. After this determination is made the curriculum can be evaluated reflecting information gained from the data"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1975." / "Submitted to the Department of Home Economics Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Judy H. Dowell, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 24).

Interactive product visualisation (IPV) addresses the shortcomings of product visualisation on e-commerce sites, such as the absence of tactile information and the inability to directly examine products. Previous research has not addressed the influence of IPV on customer satisfaction. Therefore, the objective of this study was to address this gap by investigating factors that may influence customer satisfaction. The Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model was used as a lens to further investigate the effect of stimuli of an IPV environment on the affective states of users as well as satisfaction as a response to stimuli. The furniture e-commerce industry and IKEA’s IPV tool were selected as the basis for this research. To gather data, an online survey with 5-point Likert scales was created based on previous research to discover the relationships between these factors. A total of 115 questionnaire responses were validated and analysed using multiple regression analysis. The results of the analysis indicated that interactivity, perceived ease of use, and entertainment had a positive influence on customer satisfaction as mediated by pleasure and dominance. Practical implications are presented to guide businesses that seek to implement IPV effectively.

This is a master’s thesis project of 30 credits written with guidance from the Swedish research institute ICT Viktoria and Industrial Ecology at KTH. This thesis is conducted by two students at KTH, one with a background in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Ecology and the other with a background in Energy and Environmental Technology. This study focuses on circular economy linked to the furniture industry in Sweden and how the transition from theoretical to practical concepts can be improved. The methods of this thesis consist of three semi-structured interviews, a survey and an analytical comparative literature review. The interviews, survey and literature review is analyzed with the purpose of finding important criteria relevant for office chairs in circular business models. The interviews are performed face-to-face with three different key persons; an office supply manager, a CEO at a refurbishing company and a product manager. The study focuses on product design within the Swedish furniture industry although some aspects regarding circular business models, logistics and psychological values are included. The results are design criteria for office chairs in circular business models and a design evaluation program for the industry built on these. The program, based on multi criteria analysis, can help reduce the gap between theory and practice of how circular economy should be implemented in the industry. By giving early feedback during the design phase on how well an office chair and a company’s structure meet circular economy criteria the authors hope to ease and speed up this transition. The main characteristics of an office chair designed for circular business models are: Durable Easy to service Adaptable Modular Homogeneous material composition in modules Although the transition to circular business models can be a comprehensive process the authors believe that if furniture manufacturers would integrate circular business models for office chairs into their business structure this would be both economically viable and highly beneficial for their environmental profile which can strengthen their position on the market.