First, it was the bed. My theme for it was 'death and wings', because there's this belief that, when people die, they become grow wings and fly to Heaven, or angels come down to Earth to bring them to Heaven. Also, I believe that most people would want to pass away peacefully on their own beds. As reference, I used this pair of wings:
And, I created a somewhat-Victorian styled bed. I drew carvings on the bed, as tombstones in real life also have carvings. I also added legs. You may notice that modern beds do not have legs. Just Google 'modern beds', 'Victorian beds' and 'Baroque beds' and you'll see the difference. I think bed legs really change the feeling one gets from the furniture.
Next was the side table/night stand. My logic was that.. things were placed at the side table for convenience, things like medication, reading glasses, etc. So I tried to create a piece of furniture from olden medication, which was like syrup bottles. Look below:
But.. It was pretty limited, or maybe my creativity wasn't flowing very well that day. So I tried something else, something not really related to the side table, but related to the elderly in general- walking canes. Then I drew a side table where the leg was the shape of a walking cane (like the one below).
It's shape reminded me of kneed roots. It could be a geog student thing? Kneed roots are roots of the mangrove trees which help give them support. It just so happens that walking canes also give the elderly support when they're walking. So I slowly morphed the side table's leg to look like roots, and finally I changed the surface to a square instead of a circle. I thought that since the leg was already an organic shape, a square, angular shape could add contrast and make the furniture look more interesting. (I'll scan my black boards so my furniture will all be on my e-portfolio later)
After that I did mirror. Mirror was really short, and it was also short for my adulthood room. I think mirrors are.. limited. You can't play with it very much, otherwise it won't serve it's purpose in reflecting a person's appearance. The only thing you could change was it's shape. Otherwise it would just be a decorative piece. This time I wanted to reflect a positive aspect of an elderly's life, of what I thought an elderly would/might have achieved at in end stage of life. I thought of the theme 'wisdom', and I went to research for symbols of wisdom. I didn't get much information, I only got a few. There were things like African symbols, Chinese characters.. And then I remembered that a conch shell carved on a tombstone symbolized wisdom. So I got these two pictures:
I drew out their outlines as my prep work, and I think that was all I did. The silhouettes of conch shells were really aesthetically appealing and I think it was appropriate for my mirror. It makes my mirror both useful and decorative.
Next was the settee set. As each human being grows, their physical size grows and hopefully, as well as their mental capacity, in terms of wisdom and everything. So, for each room, not only does the area and perimeter of the room increase, the number of furniture in the room also increases. As I brainstormed for this settee set, I thought of using everyday objects like.. in Rene Magritte's "Personal Values". Things like shoes, telephones, cutlery.. Or old things like gramophones, rocking chairs. Then I thought of wheelchairs. As the Chinese saying goes, 'sheng lao bing si', first one is born, then one will get old and sick, and eventually one will pass away. In a way, my elderly room also revolved around this Chinese saying, constantly reminding viewers that aging and death is part and parcel of life.
Initially I drew things like denim shorts, chopsticks & bowl. But they didn't seem to connect very well.. They didn't seem to be exactly what I wanted. After that I played with the idea of a wheelchair. But I thought, even though the elderly would eventually die, it would still be like, directly cursing them if I simply put a wheelchair into the room. Then I thought of something else.
See that, the handicapped logo up there. I thought of playing with the arrangement of furniture more instead of the design of furniture, such as.. arranging the furniture in a way whereby the aerial view of the settee set would look like that logo up there. Thus, I came up with several arrangements and chose one. This arrangement would consist of (subject to shape change) a typical Victorian/Baroque-style coffee table, my self-designed rocking chair, and a typical Victorian/Baroque-style sofa. When I say typical, I meant like this:
Marble topped, curved design legs.
And the sofa is something like this:
Cushioned, comfortable-looking seats and cornicing on the frame.
In the end, I got an arrangement close to the logo. Arranging them to look like the logo was NOT as easy as I thought, in fact, it was a lot harder!!!
Having mentioned the rocking chair already, I shall now talk about the rocking chair. I designed the rocking chair and the double stool (to be at the foot of the bed) with the same concept which is 'time'. I used the hourglass. I sort of morphed an hourglass and a rocking chair together to create 3 different designs of rocking chairs. (this would be a lot easier to describe if I had scanned my prep work beforehand) 1 of the 3 was different, the hourglass didn't make up the entire rocking chair, but it was placed underneath the seat in a horizontal position. It envisioned the saying 'sitting on lost time'. It's like, with the majority of elderly's lives behind them, I'd expect them to be somewhat sentimental? From this rocking chair, I morphed it into a double stool.
As for the desk, I tried to use pens as inspiration, because people do their writing on desks. First off, let me show you what a classic Victorian/Baroque desk looks like:
Cubby holes, and again curved-designed legs.
For pens, I dabbled with the olden quill pen and the modern gel pens.
I thought of integrating the quill pen's shape into a desk. In the end, there was a dome on part of my desk and it was partly suspended on the walls because I wanted to make the legs asymmetrical. So there was this strange balance, heavy cubby holes on one part on the surface of the desk and supporting leg on the other part below the desk.
For the modern pen, I actually used my real life pen as a reference, but for blogging purposes I found this picture online. It's the pen I use everyday, Pilot G2. It was hard to come up with something from this modern pen. Eventually I thought of adapting the relatively curvy shape of the modern pen and bring it into the legs of the desk. As for the top of this desk, I thought of rectangular cubby holes but it felt rather boring, and so I changed it to a dome shape again.
I had most difficulty with the designing the wardrobe and the shelves. I could not think of ANYTHING. Eventually I didn't choose my original design for the shelves, I decided to use just a classic Victorian/Baroque shelf. It looks like this:
But plainer, more simplified, because I wanted to tone down the complicated-ness of the Victorian designs. Also, in my imagination I was thinking of darker wood.
As for the wardrobe, I used the shape of a sock and created a chest of drawers. I think that a chest of drawers really fits into the Victorian era very well. For mine, one part of the chest was directly touching the ground while the other part was propped up on legs. This uneven choice of legs was due to the sock's shape. I mean.. the side view of socks:
One side is lower than the other.
After all the furniture designing, I did layout and I was done.
If I had to reflect on all the 3 rooms, I would say.. the elderly room was my worse done one. It was more than a challenge. I would probably give 5 out of 10 for it, my adulthood room would be a 6, and my childhood room would be a 7.
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