Concept
The Furniture Design and Repair Center is a mixed-use, community-based creative hub, where reuse, craftsmanship and innovation are celebrated. The Center focuses on utilizing damaged, unwanted and salvaged furniture as a material, moulding it according to the needs and desires of the users. The space is amply multifunctional. It welcomes furniture makers, providing them with the space to create while also allowing them to sell their pieces. It supports marginalised young people (referred to as young makers)through hands-on training in furniture reuse and repair. At the same time, it engages with the wider public (referred to as the visitors), offering various furniture modifying services alongside playful and experiential retail.
Relevance of proposal
Our homes, our offices, the spaces we visit on the daily basis – all have furniture. Some pieces, dearly beloved, are treasured across generations; others, quickly tossed away at a sign of damage. Furniture shapes our spaces and yet, on the whole, we do not know what to do with it, how to fix it when it gets damaged, how to alter it based on our preferences. It becomes this static thing that defines us and our spaces, a thing that is easier to discard adding to the ever growing issue of pollution. As such, the Center offers an alternative, a means to change our perception on the every day objects surrounding us and ultimately on the spaces those objects occupy, spaces that can become more flexible shaped by their inhabitants.
Learning how to look after our things and our spaces can become one of the factors that ensures a more sustainable and secure future. This idea is further manifested through the making academy for young makers. Research shows that one in four children/young individuals in Scotland is living in poverty, often facing limited access to education, unstable house environment and other factors, all of which establishes the feeling of uncertainty for the future. The Center aims to diminish that feeling, providing the young people (ages 16-25) with hands-on skills and knowledge as well as the practical application of those. It offers on-site accommodation to foster living-learning environment while also having a number of opportunities of on-site work to aid in economic independence. The support comes from the furniture makers who share their knowledge and experience and the visitors that contribute to feeling of community.
All parts of the Center – the workshops, the training facilities, the retail spaces, even the users – influence one another. The result is a dynamic space, a merge of education. entertainment and community.
