Furniture Joint (Omar Cheikh-Ali & Eugene Jahng)

Our joinery piece originally came to us as a design for a movable table around our hearthspace, however after problems with the concept (the idea of movable tables conflicting with the social atmosphere we wanted to create around the hearth) we ended up scrapping that idea fairly quickly.

From there we brainstormed what kinds of furniture could we possibly include in our bathhouse; tables chairs yeah, but what did our bathhouse really need? We ended up settling on the idea of our bed space, our initial intention was to have hikers sleep in slots cut in the walls, giving the resident the feeling of being encased and protected in the warm earth (warm because our hearth was adjacent to the beds at the time). However we just couldn't shake the feeling that our beds were looking a little too much like this:

Catacombs are NOT what we were shooting for at all - not in a million years would we want to create that kind of atmosphere for our residents. So we decided that in order to break away from that dead feeling, we would create a furniture piece that worked off of our carving out of space in the walls. We rotated the direction that people would sleep by 90° so people could still experience the feeling of being protected by a carved niche in the wall while breaking away from the catacomb stereotype. Our original design was fairly simple; just an upside down L shape where people's legs would be resting on the bottom line of the L:

At this point in the design process, we were more interested in how the structure would connect to the concrete cutouts in the wall. We thought about making the joint as seamless as possible, having a steel or aluminum half lap base cast in the concrete (both on the sides and with lips into the bottom), the bed pieces placed on top of that with another half lap coming down on top of it being bolted into place to support the cantilever out of the wall and make sure the bed was securely attached to the wall. Our design concept was almost like knitting the furniture piece into the concrete structure:

With the logistics for our joinery piece finished, we moved on to manipulating the design of the ladder to get to the bed as well as how the top and bottom beds would connect with some amount of personal storage space for the occupants, we ended up keeping our original concept of subtraction of space, having the bottom bunk be enclosed by plywood on the bottom and up over the top leaving the sides open for people to get in or out. In addition to this, we created a small nook for the person on the top bunk to store something below their legs. We also changed the design of the steps on the ladder to be more stable than a waffle grid and also more spatial than the strict regulation of planes that a waffle grid would offer.

You may notice that the beds are not very wide, however for the average hiker, the size is perfect for a common foam sleeping mat and sleeping bag. As a result of the top half of the occupant's body being in the concrete niche, the design would prevent one from falling off by rolling out of their bunk. Now if you would excuse me, I myself will head to bed.