The landscapes of my home in Connecticut are important to me. When I was young, I went to the woods for seclusion and comfort. While I wandered through the woods, I discovered a passion for storytelling. Now that I no longer live in New England, I miss the familiar landscapes of home. As a way to portray my sentiment, I write poetic narratives and create objects to illustrate natural landscapes. I combine my interests of classic Americana art and literature with brutalist architecture and modern furniture to create immersive installations. I work with concrete and hardwood to materially bridge the unnatural with the natural. A Familiar House is an installation consisting of a concrete jail cell, cathedral windows made of denim and a poetry chapbook. This work stems from my incarcerated brother’s longing to be home. I depict my brother’s prison in the American West through concrete walls and portray our New England home with poetry. A Familiar House represents the desire for the familiar while confined in an isolated landscape.

This is a noticing and a return - a good old-fashioned call and response. An understanding and a becoming. At present, the noticing is on brokenness and the response on reparation. The work is filtered and guided through my background in traditional woodworking and furniture design. A lifetime love of comic books, storytelling, and illustration refuses silence, and it escapes in bursts as I work intuitively through design and material. A newly discovered love of writing finds meaning in that intuition. It’s impossible, even irresponsible, for me to notice and question the brokenness around me without questioning the brokenness within me. It’s cyclical. The noticing becomes self-examination; the response becomes self-discovery. By leaving my surroundings in a more secure, joyful state than I found them, I am assured of the following: They have been revived; given the opportunity to thrive once more in my absence. I am leaving better too.

<p><strong>Background:</strong> The customer relationship is becoming more important for companies within the Swedish furniture design industry due to competition for market shares. The market is getting more crammed while the interest for furniture design amongst people is increasing, therefore furniture design companies need to find effective ways to attract loyal customers. Research has been made to show the importance of collaboration between companies and this is something that can increase the market share for the involved partners and reach a greater customer base. To maintain these customers it is essential to establish the right communication at the right time. Another area that will most likely increase and that companies can gain by communicating to potential customers is Green thinking. By marketing a company’s environmental work it can develop a stronger relationship with its customers. These areas might have significance in maintaining loyal customers in the future of the furniture design industry.</p><p><strong>Research Question: </strong><em>What challenges does a Swedish furniture design company face when trying to gain or maintain customers?</em></p><p> </p><p><strong>Objective:</strong> The objective with this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding and analyse the<strong> </strong>issues and challenges new or already established Swedish furniture design companies face related to gaining or maintaining their customers. From the emerging responses about the relating areas of marketing and communication, collaboration, the green perspective and the conditions on the Swedish market, we aim to conduct thorough interviews with furniture design companies on the Swedish market. From the complied and analysed answers we intend to connect the challenges to the chosen theories to understand the importance of customer loyalty and the importance of it for companies in this industry.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Method: </strong>In this thesis the research strategy used will be of qualitative nature. The research design will take the form of a comparative study where we will investigate 4 companies and analyse their perspective on the areas that we aim to investigate. Thorough interviews with the chosen companies will be carried out in order to grasp the interviewees’ perspective on the subject rather than our own.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> The findings of our research shows that smaller enterprises might struggle harder than bigger enterprises due to lack of resources. The lack of resources can negatively affect a company’s communication and marketing channels such as their environmental friendly work. Since expensive certificate that proves for eco-friendly products and services could be hard to obtain. The well established companies within this industry do not seem to adapt quickly to modern communication tools such as blogs or other social medias. This can be explained by the company culture and old heritage within the companies. Companies within this industry seem to lack of a clear strategy or well formed plan of how to reach and maintain customers. Therefore companies could benefit by having a clear strategy towards receiving loyal customers since it would clearly give them an advantage in this competitive market according to our findings. There also seem to be a lack of collaboration between companies which could also help companies to gain market shares and reach more customers. The furniture design industry is a competitive market and to endure the market conditions a focus on customer relationship and customer loyalty might be the best solution.</p><p> </p>

Background: The customer relationship is becoming more important for companies within the Swedish furniture design industry due to competition for market shares. The market is getting more crammed while the interest for furniture design amongst people is increasing, therefore furniture design companies need to find effective ways to attract loyal customers. Research has been made to show the importance of collaboration between companies and this is something that can increase the market share for the involved partners and reach a greater customer base. To maintain these customers it is essential to establish the right communication at the right time. Another area that will most likely increase and that companies can gain by communicating to potential customers is Green thinking. By marketing a company’s environmental work it can develop a stronger relationship with its customers. These areas might have significance in maintaining loyal customers in the future of the furniture design industry. Research Question: What challenges does a Swedish furniture design company face when trying to gain or maintain customers?   Objective: The objective with this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding and analyse the issues and challenges new or already established Swedish furniture design companies face related to gaining or maintaining their customers. From the emerging responses about the relating areas of marketing and communication, collaboration, the green perspective and the conditions on the Swedish market, we aim to conduct thorough interviews with furniture design companies on the Swedish market. From the complied and analysed answers we intend to connect the challenges to the chosen theories to understand the importance of customer loyalty and the importance of it for companies in this industry.   Method: In this thesis the research strategy used will be of qualitative nature. The research design will take the form of a comparative study where we will investigate 4 companies and analyse their perspective on the areas that we aim to investigate. Thorough interviews with the chosen companies will be carried out in order to grasp the interviewees’ perspective on the subject rather than our own.   Conclusions: The findings of our research shows that smaller enterprises might struggle harder than bigger enterprises due to lack of resources. The lack of resources can negatively affect a company’s communication and marketing channels such as their environmental friendly work. Since expensive certificate that proves for eco-friendly products and services could be hard to obtain. The well established companies within this industry do not seem to adapt quickly to modern communication tools such as blogs or other social medias. This can be explained by the company culture and old heritage within the companies. Companies within this industry seem to lack of a clear strategy or well formed plan of how to reach and maintain customers. Therefore companies could benefit by having a clear strategy towards receiving loyal customers since it would clearly give them an advantage in this competitive market according to our findings. There also seem to be a lack of collaboration between companies which could also help companies to gain market shares and reach more customers. The furniture design industry is a competitive market and to endure the market conditions a focus on customer relationship and customer loyalty might be the best solution.

I have always been told that form follows function. But does it have to be that way? I decided to see it  from another angle. Kinesics is a term form non verbal komunication. In my thesis project I have been working with body language in furniture.  I believe that furniture, just like us, has an expression and a character. We often tend to desccribe furniture with the same words as we describe people, for example: "A relaxed chair" or "a cocky table". I wanted to exaggerate the expression by applying body language to my furniture and make them become something more than just a function. I wanted to give them a character and bring them to life.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Mississippi State University. Department of Forest Products. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Klubinių baldų projektą sudaro fotelis, stalas ir pufas. Pasirinkta ši tema dėl tokių priežasčių: tokio tipo baldų pasirinkimas gan nedidelis, tokio tipo baldai salyginai brangūs ir ši tema man yra artima. Baldų formos ir spalvos įkvėptos gamtos – idėja kilo iš kokoso riešuto. Pagrindiniai kriterijai kuriais vadovautasi: funckionalumas, estetinė išvaizda, aukšta kokybė ir žema kaina. Sukurti baldai yra praktiški dėl keičiamų dažniausiai dėvimų dalių. Ištepus šias dalis ar mechaniškai pažeidus jas galima lengvai pakeisti, tai yra itin aktualu, nes nereikialauja papildomų išlaidų (transportavimas, baldo pervilkimas, darbo kaina). Dėl šios baldo savybės jį lengva pritaikyti prie interjero, gali būti keičiamos spalvos bei medžiagos (oda, audinys ir kt.). Fotelio galinėje dalyje pritvirtinta detalė yra tik mano pasiūlytas sprendinys, dėl baldo unikalios konstrukcijos, gali būti gaminami įvairūs kevalai, kitos formos detalės. Vietoje užrašo „COCONUT“ gali būti naudojami kiti užrašai, kuriuos siekiama populiarinti. Baigiamąjį darbą sudaro penki planšetai, aiškinamasis raštas, brėžinių aplankas, bukletas ir gaminys – fotelis. / Club furniture design project consists of a chair, a table and a pouffe. This theme was chosen for the following reasons: the choise of this type of furniture is relatively small, such furniture is expensive and the topic is close to me. The shape and the colour are inspired by nature – the coconut. The main criteria I followed in my diploma work were: functionality, aesthetic appearance, high quality and low price. The created furniture is practical because of the parts that can be replaced. These parts can be easily replaced when smeard or mechanically broken and that is really important because it does not require additional expenses (transportation, furniture reclothing, labour price). Due to these removable parts, the designed furniture can be easily adapted to any interior – the colour and the material of the parts can be changed (leather, cloth, ect.). The attached part in the back of the armchair is my solution, variuos parts of other form can be made and attached. Other notes that are wanted to be populatized can be used instead of „COCONUT“. The Bachelor work consists of five flatbeds, the note folder, the folder of drawings, brochure and the product – an armchair.

Blurred LInes seeks to reopen discussion of the scale and interrelation of architecture and furniture, traditionally conceived. It traces the recent history of furniture and architectural making from the high-point of the “built-in” through the manufacturing age, questioning the corresponding stratification of our immediate built environment into building, infill and objects. Engaging modernist and contemporary criticism, it explores a return to unified building in which the architecture might well become the furniture and vice-versa, erasing built hierarchy and asynchronicity. The paper describes lessons learned from modern masters of the discipline from Adolf Loos to Nader Tehrani and attempts to identify key formal, spatial and constructional considerations in the successful integration and “blurring” of this line. All of this comes to bear in the establishment of design experiments to be carried out in studio, testing the possibilities and viability of the paper's theoretical models.

Relationships between furniture and children s play are examined in this research paper, with the purpose of connecting features in furniture to specific play activities. The focus of the research is children between the ages of 4 to 8 years old in the context of indoor play at home. An image survey of furniture created for children s use displays a range of attributes and aesthetics designed into children s furniture. A collage study conducted with designers, parents and teachers reveals the perception of furniture s use and anticipated attractiveness to children by analyzing each item s characteristics. Trace observation of how children manipulate their home environment and home interviews with parents provide opportunities for a detailed description of children s play activities linked to specific pieces of furniture. Child interviews conducted for a National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) sponsored research project for the study of Inclusive Indoor Play provided information on children s preferences with respect to indoor play at home. This research paper discusses how the combined data of these four studies links distinct furniture features to specific play activities. The resulting data proposes an informative tool to be used by designers to create furniture more conducive to children s play.

Within the furniture and forestry industries, there is a need for high value products to be developed for international markets utilising Australian hardwood timbers. This investigation has addressed this requirement, with a focus upon a particular timber species - Spotted Gum (corymbia citriodora subsp. variegata), a diversely eminent species of Queensland hardwood timber. The investigation was initiated by collaborating parties within the Co-operative Research Center for Wood Innovations (CRCWI) particularly the Department of Primary Industries – Forestry Research (DPI&F) in Queensland. It was decided by the DPI&F that an industrial design contribution, through the instigation of a design research led investigation would be a beneficial avenue for addressing prevalent issues in the forestry and furniture industries. Background research processes undertaken in both the forestry and furniture industries in a geographically specific area of Queensland were vital in establishing immediate investigation parameters. Following the establishment of these parameters and their accepted relevance to broader national industry concerns, the consequent development of an appropriate research method in this investigation was undertaken. The method generated needed to address two major issues. First, to address technical problems in the application of Spotted Gum timber to the production fine furniture, surpassing various initiatives to resolve these issues in the past, secondly, to address a lack of market knowledge, with regard to product design parameters for export markets within the participating Queensland furniture manufacturing industry. The method employed seeks to establish the degree of cultural difference that must be accounted for by manufacturers in developing products specifically for export market integration. This theory was tested by the development of two experimental indoor dining chairs, that were designed and prototyped, recognising to the best degree possible the exceptional technical requirements of Spotted Gum timber. Each of the two chairs were developed to the requirements of pre-determined market and user oriented needs of a separate case study destination, determined through qualitative and quantatative information generation. The specific niche market design parameters applied to design development, created a precursory theory that the products would have a greater degree of success in market integration if they were designed for specific niche market parameters.Each of the chairs was then exhibited in an appropriate market arena for the destination for which it was designed. A series of questions seeking preferences for each of the chairs, and the reasons for those preferences were solicited from those attending both of the exhibitions. The testing process resulted in a conclusion that there is little cultural difference that must be accounting for in approaching design development for the two international markets identified tested as case studies. The initial chair designs, developed and used in the testing role within the investigation, were according re-designed given the findings of the market testing process.