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Aspiration and Folding Chairs
December 23rd, 2009A few decades ago, there was a Masonic lodge building in downtown Buffalo, NY that had the most beautifully ornate chairs in it. Many early members of that lodge were furniture makers and they applied their craft to decorate the room. These chairs were not only amazing to look at, but were also a grand sight to behold just by their sheer size. The furniture was built inside of the lodge and so big it couldn’t fit through the doors of the building. When the lodge moved to a new building, they had to cut a hole in the roof and get the furniture craned out.
In this age of mass production and Ikea, seeing ornate hand-made furniture really makes you appreciate the talents of man. Seeing work like this is a lot like viewing art. It’s inspiring to see what we as a race can create. Now imagine for a minute that when the lodge brothers got together in the early days they said “What we need is some furniture that can be swapped out of here into any other building quickly and easily, no matter what the building characteristics. We also need to make sure that they are very durable and inexpensive.” If this was how it happened, the lodge room would be full of folding chairs.
There is nothing wrong with trying to create very portable and utilitarian solutions to problems, but be very careful what you are optimizing for. In the case described above, I think the best solution was the ornate hand made furniture. It make the room feel differently than it would if it was full of metal folding chairs. In this environment the way you feel when you enter is more important than the ability to move it out the door. When you are making your decisions about design and functionality, prioritize what you want to optimize for and develop your plans around it.
Tags: hand made, inspiration, optimizing, ornate, planning