“These past 8 weeks in Ms Xu’s year 10 Design and Technology class, we have been designing and producing a wooden plant holder.
The scenario for this particular project was based on a furniture company called ‘EcoCraft’, who recently started a marketing campaign. They invited 25 of their existing customers to send them old furniture no longer in use to be redesigned into small wooden plant holders. Since the start of the campaign, EcoCraft had received a large quantity of old furniture pieces, and among them, were many medium-length logs as well as flat rectangular and square wooden pieces.
As designers working for EcoCraft, our task was to work with the recycled pieces given and produce a high quality, modern wooden plant holder. We were free to add appealing and relating features to the design. This entire design process was to be documented in a visual folio for marketing purposes.
As a class, we began this process by thinking of an imaginative client who had a specific theme they wanted on their plant holder, which became the baseline of the project for us to then build up from. We then spent a lengthy two weeks measuring out the correct pieces of wood to begin masking the legs and frame together. After this process we began building the plant holder, where Ms Xu taught us a series of techniques like making cross-halving joints and routing. We spent a lot of time chiselling and sanding the wooden pieces in order to get a high-quality product with smooth surface and stable structure. When we were assembling the plant holder together, we realised the importance of ensuring accurate measurement and marking at the start of the process.
Over this course of our first project, we learnt a series of new techniques and skills that well-equip us for our future design projects. It not only allowed us to collaborate and share ideas together as a class, but also to learn how to use the right tools and materials to create a high-quality product tailored for clients’ needs. Overall this was definitely a long but gratifying journey that we all enjoyed!”
Christos | Year 10 Design and Technology Student
