Ava
2026
Birch Ply, Mild Steel
_Space-saving Furniture Sprint
_Abstract Multifunctionality
_Working Within Workshop Constraints
_1 Month
Ava is a multifunctional piece of furniture for small living spaces, with two nesting components that transform between a chair and a table. Designed and manufactured within university workshop facilities as a one-month sprint project, it pushed material and making capability within a tight timeframe and limited resources.
The concept grew from observing how chairs and coffee tables are so often used interchangeably in small living and dining spaces, chairs doubled as tables, tables doubled as seats. Ava set out to express that relationship more deliberately, developing a piece with a small footprint that could be tucked away when not needed, while pushing the form into something more design-forward and abstract than its everyday counterpart.
Initial sketches leaned into archetypal forms, using simple shapes to define the object's identity. Building on an earlier project that used triangular forms to construct a seat, early modelling revealed that two isosceles triangles could be manipulated into multiple configurations, and, crucially, nested within one another, forming the basis of the final transforming structure.
Material choices were shaped by both structural need and workshop constraints, settling on 24mm birch ply and 1mm mild steel. Achieving the steep 33-degree angle on the ply's side profile required removing the riving knife from the table saw, while folding the edge of the steel sheet gave it the rigidity to bear weight once seated on, the two components tig welded together, the ply finished in wax and the steel powder coated in a RAL burgundy red.