Design Studio: Cardboard Box Exercise

One of the first exercises we did in my design studio class was a “box” exercise, where we were given a piece of paper with about 9 cubes on it. We were asked to use the cubes for something and were given 10 min to do it. The results were definitely interesting. The class made everything from houses to shirts to ladders to crazy tessellation, but the most interesting were definitely the ones that thought “outside” of the box. Go figure.

Then we were split into groups and given a cardboard box. This took the exercise from 2-D to 3-D. After manipulating the box in a variety of ways, we came upon a chair without cutting or destroying the box at all– just a little bit of hot glue. We wanted to give this chair an elevated feel, and happen to have recycled red velvet paper to emphasize the throne-like nature of this otherwise rather simple, boring, cardboard box.