Month: November 2017

26^th Nov tea project concept chosen

In my opinion Chinese tea has its special meaning out of the others because it has the longest history of tea. Personally I am not interested in the proper tea but the dust, which produced through production line. With this in mind I combine a scene from a documentary I’ve watched with the difficult situation when people drinking tea dust with out tea filter. Later on I realized instead of getting annoyed with the floating dust. Tea drinkers are more enjoy the way they have teas and it became a historical culture in Bei Jing.

 

Last century there were lots of popular teahouses located in Bei Jing. They served different class of people. People with higher income normally ordered fresh tealeaf that picked up recently. Those impoverished people are more likely to drink tea dust collected from a rang of high quality teas. They use teacup’s lid to stop the dust come to mouse. This gradually become a unique culture in Chinese tea history as well as the historical Bei Jing tea house. Unfortunately this culture starting to fall as time passing by. Modern plastic bottle takeover the traditional teacup. People no longer go to the teahouse enjoy their leisure time with a cup of mixed tea dust in a particular interesting drinking pose. Most of the tea houses were force to shut down. Hopefully in this project I will generate a way to combine the shape and the purposes of tradition Chinese teacup and modern bottle to bring the lost Bei Jing teahouse culture back to our life.

4th Nov

I went to another community space this week and attempt to gathering more information about the function of furniture used there. Further more I also went to V&A museum collecting primary research of plywood and different types of material can be used for furniture making.

 

In my opinion these researches are really helpful especially benefit on the function of our table. This furniture in Sunshine house community weren’t fully used in my opinion some drawers or storage can be added. Most of the documents or information guides were placed on separate shelters that took massive space.

 

I think adding shelter on our table is quite essential and I will do more research about multifunctional table and how do they preform in community space.

12^th Nov

I’m really appreciating the one to one scaled box I have done during this week. Instead of using other materials test the structure of the most complex part in our table the flip over storage. I decide use proper plywood create one unit out of eight. At the begging I was going to use dowel joint for the box, which wasn’t the simplest and straightforward method to use for the real table. Biscuit joint was chosen because it can be assembled and adjusted with out hammering and squeezing. Through out the making some specific measurement were changed as the technician mentioned as a professional maker they won’t count the number after ‘.’ Further more I understand the common used length in wood that is millimeter. At the mean while I looked at different type of hinges and their function as well as attach them on the wooden box I’ve made see how do they work. Consequently I decide to use Blum hinge, which can hide inside the storage and can slow down the opening speed.

 

Some other issues were generated through out the making such as the handle and box’s edge was matched together and the support stick couldn’t be moved at the same time. Fortunately I figure out some solutions.