Miles Kozatch - Senior Project

Week 2

After establishing what my product was, I decided I needed to find different design concepts within sculpture, architecture and furniture from different time periods and places around the globe. The designers that really interested me were architects who also designed furniture. Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Vander Rohe, and Frank Gehry, are excellent examples of architects who stepped into the realm of interior design and created every aspect of entire structures, inside and out. You can see a lot of similarities between an architect’s buildings and other designs. For the architect, having a wide range of functioning designs makes it easier to establish a style. A style is what artists strive to find through their work. For myself, I imagine the best way to find my own style is to explore the concepts of others. By immersing myself with the ideas of architects, sculptors, and industrial/interior designers and breaking them up into categories by location, age, function, feeling, and material, I can begin to start and determine my own style. My quick sketches can turn into detailed drawings, and then maybe a 3D representation. Once I have a ‘finished’ piece, I can critique it based on functionality and aesthetics, and have the design evolve further.
    I am visiting Robert Wilson’s ‘chair room’ at the Watermill Center, and have permission to sketch and photograph the collection. Although online research is fast and easy, real-life works of art possess an aura that compliments their uniqueness and history. With furniture, the aura is especially important because it corresponds with the feeling of the room and the other objects within it.

First Post

    My first proposal towards the end of last year in May vaguely communicated my desire to make a whole set of functioning furniture. In July I attended a one-month architecture course at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where I got an idea of my work ethic and gained an understanding of many materials that were new to me. The assignments specific to the relationship of negative and positive space enabled me to begin to conceptualize my own designs. In August I worked at BarnesCoy Architects in Bridgehampton, NY as an intern. At first my job consisted of organizing and cleaning the office space, completely updating the office’s extensive library, and starting the data conversion over digital; basic intern work. After my first week, they asked if I would work on the models of houses built years before; restore them, clean them. With the tips and tricks the office’s model maker, Koichi Mastumoto, taught me added to the skills I learned in July, I successfully restored four models.
    When it came time to decide what I wanted to dedicate the next four months to, my summer helped me decide more than I thought. My experience in July made me realize that my goal product was unreasonable; making an entire set of functioning furniture would take too much time, money, and materials to do in one-third of year. My newfound love of model making provided an excellent solution. In changing the scale and materials of my final product, I could cut the cost and effort, without losing any of the design aspect. My final proposal states that for my final product, I’m going to create an interior space, and completely furnish it.
    The purpose of the design of the room is to reverse the mentality of rapidly depleting family life. Families in America are spending less and less time together. The function and purpose of the set of furniture within the space is not only to accommodate comfortable living conditions, but also to encourage one to incorporate others in their daily life.

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