Contemporary Coffee
Industrial Design Studio | Fall 2025 | 5 Weeks
Skills: Sketching | Illustrator | Photoshop | Wood working | Fusion | Photography
Overview
For this project, I intended to design a furniture piece that would fit into my apartment and support me wherever I go in my career. I was inspired by contemporary furniture pieces to guide the aesthetic of my design.
Research
Research for the project began with a trip to Ikea to study furniture pieces that fit within a post and slab or a post and beam technique. The Stockholm 2025 coffee table inspired me to design a functional coffee table.
Sketch iterations
When sketching, I focused on exploring different forms for coffee tables. I focused on simple designs that had symmetry for manufacturing purposes. I ended up with a multi-level design whose proportions I would experiment with in Fusion.
Fusion Iterations
Once I brought the design into Fusion, I experimented with floating joinery and symmetry along the levels. I tightened up the design as I moved towards the final design.
Full-scale drawing
Once the design for the table was finalized, I translated the final dimensions for a full-scale poster to print out. It served as my guide for how to approach the woodworking aspect of it.
Woodworking and assembly
For the build, I purchased five boards of cherry wood and some oak dowels. I started by processing the boards, cutting them up to size, and running them through a planer and joiner. The process was then formed into two parts: the table tops and the supports.
When it came to the table tops, I did glue-ups for them and used the table saw to cut them up to size. To achieve holes, I used a drill press, a jigsaw, and a hand dremel with a template.
For the supports, I cut up the cherry wood to their correct sizes and used a domino joiner for the joints. To attach the dowels, I cut them to size and fashioned some scrap to keep them from rotating. I used a slot mortiser to carve the needed slots into them.
