Size Matter

Size Matter is a university project in collaboration with Camden Council, London. Families living in Camden social housing are facing overcrowded living situation, and the aim of the project is to alleviate their situation. In order to do that, we visited 6 families who agreed to participate in the project, to observe and analyse their homes, the way they live and the problems they face everyday. With the insides we gathered from these visits, we designed tools for a codesign workshop during which we explored solutions for each family’s particular problem, together with the residents. We used the data we gathered to create personas, which we used as a basis for the scaled service system project. We designed and developed several furniture solutions for the most common problems families are facing - storage space and organisation. We then designed a whole range of products as well as a system permitting each resident to identify their specific needs and customise our solutions to their particular space. An online platform is currently in the making, that will allow all the residents of Camden to access the designs, customise the 3d files, and send directly the 2d files of the pieces to the CNC machine in the future Camden fablab, where their furniture will be cut. The system is designed to promote social engagement, so each resident will have to sand and finish their own furniture the way they want it to look like (paint, varnishes, etc). The design of the range of products has been developed in such a way that allows people without any previous knowledge of design and furniture making to be able to assemble their own furniture. The pieces connect to each other by joints and the only additional pieces needed are wooden dowels and a hammer. Each furniture solution comes with a detailed step-by-step assembly instruction.