Farmpunk Furniture Made of Upcycled Equipment
Like the physical labor of plowing a field, much mental effort is required to push past pattern recognition to see the potential for something new inside something old.
Using everything from construction pins and watering troughs to mower axles and silo bands, United Two Design continually envisions creative uses for discarded farming scraps.
How about a bench built from 1800s farmhouse beams, a broken bulldozer sprocket, some gang mower axles, remnants of a recycled silo, a steel wagon wheel … and perhaps part of a stop sign to round it all out?
Drain pipes, pins and gang motor blades made for surprisingly fine modern asymmetrical wine racks of various types, with old wooden columns for both visual and physical balance.
Yet it is not all about complexity – a simply-bent section of an old steel I-beam or a partial bulldozer sprocket can serve to hold classic vintages as well.
Nor is it necessarily about abstract modernism, as this near-kitsch, Frankenstein-worthy hodgepodge piece illustrates with heavy materials but light-hearted humor. In their own words, the team “recovers material from local farms, industrial sites and residential projects”, and their “raw, homegrown designs draw inspiration from the past, present, and future while working with the original form … building responsible furnishings for residential and commercial use, indoor and out.”
More info via Auburn Pub:
“To make the benches, Keith Traub said, it takes two weeks just to place the wood over the steel frame after the frame is formed and pre-drilled. Then, each piece of wood is pre-drilled and countersunk before it is screwed in with more than 3,000 screws per bench.”
“Some of the wood pieces that make up the curvature on the sides of the benches have to be steam-bent, he said. Eventually, he will put them in crates and have them trucked out to San Francisco.”
