PARSONS AAS INTERIOR DESIGN - The New School

another Way DesIgners can helP
reDuce consumPtIon Is to DesIgn
obJects WIth multIPle PurPoses
ing, engineering and prototyping highedge,
furniture, lighting, objects, and
environments”. They provide detailed
and hand-crafted solutions to everyday
design issues, custom mixed-media
fabrication, and UL listing services to
designers, architects and contractors
with their commercial and residential
applications in mind. Some of the
techniques they use for design are welding,
fabrication, engineering, machining,
laser cutting, water-jet cutting, mold
making, lighting, underwriters Laboratory
listing, patinas and special finishes.
They are able to do custom metal work
for all types of fabrications utilize a
combination of new, traditional and
forgotten metalworking techniques like
blacksmithing. They work in conjunction
with glass blowers, glass casters, jewelers,
moldmakers and woodworkers to
make whatever can be dreamed up.
A new double product they make is
nicknamed “Pluggy”, aka The Side Wired
Desk. This desk organizes all the visual
madness of cords, power bricks, wires
and accessories that come with our
technological lifestyles. With every laptop,
monitors, hard drives and speaker
there is a cast of characters like the
power strip, and cables. Pluggy was
born from the constant needing we have
to plug our various tools for charge, and
TMR’s designers did an extensive search
to find that no product like it was available.
Pluggy also has a hidden cable
management system and power source
which helps it aesthetically, while making
it fast and easy to get at the cable
ends to rearrange them when the need
arises. From their website: “One of the
solutions was to make the wire grommets
a part of the design. The other
solution was to make a hinged tray to
manage the cables that can also hold
hard drives and any other corded object
that clutters the desktop”.
Trudy Miller is a Brooklyn based architect
whose design practice emphasizes
modular and customized design to reduce
the waste and glut that is brought
through mass production. One of her
prototypes is “Live Work Play”, a sofa
that turns into a desk and bench seat
with storage. With dimensions measuring
just 5’ x 4’, it would easily fit in the
tiniest of NY apartments, and creating a
space that is truly able to transform to
the needs of its inhabitant.
She is among the small percentage
of architects who have branched out
to fashion to more deeply explore her
design specialization. Most recently,
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