Sakura Media Console - Part II
“You don’t think your way to creative work. You work your way to creative thinking.”
Design Elements
Taking a stack of lumber and turning it into a piece of furniture — a piece of artwork — is a feat of strength, of vision, of planning, of iteration and execution. What looks good on paper ends up being infeasible, ugly, or bulky and you must make alterations. Wood fibers can tear out leaving ugly scars. Hands can slip with a power tool and you turn a beautiful piece of lumber into scrap wood.So I tend to design something basic and leave room for modification as I go. These are some initial drawings of what I was looking to build. There is a lot of free flowing in this phase, but it quickly culminates in a concept that I think I like, and most importantly one I think I can actually build.
The main focus on any console or cabinet is the doors. They are the main attraction and the most functional piece of any cabinet. I went with this slat style because I had done it before (Nelson Bench) and I liked the look.
Form dictated function in this case as I felt the slatted door would look great as a sliding door rather than a swinging door. This is where I took a leap because it was my first time trying a sliding door. I did some research on sliding door hardware, but I ended up coming across an article on doing it the traditional way without any hardware which seemed easy enough to accomplish.
With the outside of the case designed, I ventured in and began to consider the use. The case’s interior dimensions were tall and shallow so I felt it needed some shelves to utilize most of the available space without becoming cluttered.
What is often an overlooked aspect of any console is the feet. In most of my drawings they were essentially placeholder squares as I wanted to let the completed console dictate where I would go with the feet. While I ended up thinking about this aspect last, I didn’t want it to feel like an afterthought and also wanted to treat the lumber organically so I kept the live edge and created a trestle base. No one will likely ever see the joinery, but I spent the time to work on my hand-skills and created a housed bridle joint between the cross beam and the legs.
Part III coming soon…