Development and Validation of “Architectural Furniture”
Research on Furniture Combining Architectural Functions
(“Architectural Furniture”) Vol. 2

Toshihiko Suzuki

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4. Conclusion
The characteristic of Architectural Furniture lies in the fact that roles (to segment space / to provide functions in place / to be able to easily move and modify), which had been shared by architecture and furniture, were integrated into one interior environment. We reported about three types of Architectural Furniture, i.e. “Mobile Kitchen”, “Foldaway Guest Room” and “Foldaway Office”. It seems to be possible to live just by Architectural Furniture which enables sleeping, dining and housekeeping. The mechanism of “Folding in and out of three types of Architectural Furniture series” is shown in Fig.8.

The photographs show how they are folded out to change into functional spaces respectively from compact shapes like a wooden suitcase while being folded in. On the shooting of the photographs, series of Architectural Furniture were arranged against a skeleton-like studio to check their operations. What was experienced by setting up the site made us expect that degree of freedom for the interior would be dramatically improved by the use of Architectural Furniture.
It is common in Japan that room arrangement is decided in detail at the beginning in case of building condominiums.

It was often the case that residents had to live with it being unable to renovate immediately, even though compositions and lifestyles of their families had changed. Hereafter however, it will be possible to set up a composite and wide room arrangement (bare space) in advance, by utilizing Architectural Furniture. In other words, Architectural Furniture handles slight alteration and adjustment of room arrangement required on a daily basis, while skeleton infill deals with major adjustment of room arrangement and framework. We hope that Architectural Furniture will take a role as a lubricant to complement skeleton infill in construction industry.