Ceiling Shelf
Folding storage for when space is tight
Furniture Design, 2017
Concept
People are moving to cities, and cities are getting denser. Tighter spaces mean people can and have to be more efficient. Designers will need to encourage full lives to happen in small spaces.
When thinking about space in a room, often the limited resource is floor space. One way to adjust to limited floor space is to have a folding mechanism, so that a not-in-use object takes up a smaller footprint. Another is to avoid any footprint, by engaging the third dimension and using the space above other objects. I wanted to make a piece of furniture that incorporated both of these efficiency ideas.
Prototyping
Early in the design process, I prototyped a ceiling shelf out of dark cardboard. In contrast to the white ceiling, the model both drew the eye, and the dark tones added a visual weight to the object. Heavy objects overhead stir up deep-seeded danger instincts. I realized I would need to design the shelf to seem light, floating, and cloud-like. Additionally lighter tones better blended with most ceilings.
To visually break the lines from the shelf’s side walls, in later versions I moved the walls in from the edges, causing the bottom panel to seem more of a floating island rather than the bottom of a suspended mass.
Details
On the same airy theme, I rounded the corners of the top and bottom panels to add softness. Since the sides, fore, and aft walls were all equally set-back from the bottom panel, I used the same set-back dimension as the radius for the curves.
I took additional steps to conceal the metallic fasteners and hinges, using wood filler and by routing recesses for the main hinges.
As safety is of extreme importance, the shelf could not be allowed to swing open at small disturbances. A routed recess into the bottom panel locks the latch in place when the shelf is closed, but easily releases the latch with a small lift.
