Furniture Making with Teens

"Make Something Big" was a furniture design-fabrication workshop developed by Zach Fredin and myself at The Possible Zone in Boston, MA. This 4 day intensive covered design-thinking through to fabrication and finishing. Four stools and one table were completed by a cohort of 5 H.S. students. The process included digitizing hand drawings and learning how to manipulate designs using Adobe Illustrator; rapid prototyping using quarter scaled cardboard mock-ups to quickly ideate different designs; and fabricating final designs on various machines with half inch (for the stools) and three quarter inch (for the table) plywood. When prototyping the initial designs, furniture joints were 'fixed' so that students could modify the top and legs of the table design but not get slowed down by finickiness of joinery. This strategy allowed us to keep engagement high (all hands were always working!) and complete a highly ambitious project (four stools and a table) from start to finish in 4 days. Students looked to nature for inspiration, and the final table top took influence from a spider web, where different student designs were quilted into the spiral segments. Equipment used included: Zund CNC machine, Mimaki UV printer, Adobe Illustrator, Festool sanders, and spraypaint tools. The final furniture set is in use in the student lounge at The Possible Zone in Boston, MA. It has been deemed the 'game table' by the student design team.

Summer 2024

Co-lead

H.S. students

Zach Fredin