One of the things that we have been working on is taking some cabinets in the studio that are not use that much and put homasote board on top on them. The idea is to give them a little more use as tackable space. One of the issues that we where running into was very close tolerances on the doors and the fact that homasote is not strong at all. Mostly we did not want to remake a ton of doors but also not just have homasote glued to the door.

           

      I cut some homasote to do some mock ups of the doors to see what we where dealing with. The cabinet door is a weird thickness of 13/16th and the homasote is .5 inch so getting the thickness right will be key.  We actually like the look of the door but worry that the hinge would snap the weak homasote. Now we are going to look at reinforcing the door along the sides and maybe in the middle to solve the weakness issue. 

          Over the summer at Philadelphia University the ID Grad students have been asked to participate in a project to design and build the furniture for our new studio space.  In the Fall of 2012 the program is getting 15 new students on top of the 7 we started with the first year. With more people comes more space for the program. This is an opportunity to build and design the work environment we want. 
         The first part of this project was getting the book Make Space  by Scott Witthoft. We are using it as a jumping off point for ideas.  It is great book that offers interesting DIY pieces for school studios. Make Space has tips,insurrections, and materials lists  for simple and cheap materials to build mobile pieces for any studio. So any space can be rearranged at a moments notice.  
        We have many goals for the room, the first is flexibly in a space's arrangement and use.  The room can be a "regular" studio at one moment then change so students can work and have a class on the other side of the room. The studio is also going to be open to all student levels as well. Undedrgads can walk though/hang out in the space to check out what is going on, have as many random interactions between students as possible to talk about work.  


So their is going to be lots of work over the summer.   


Here are some before pics of what our new studio space.