38 Boxes- 'ways to see interior design’ for 2012 BEIJING DESIGN WEEK
To mark the beginning of the new interior design course at the Royal College of Art, head of department, Ab Rogers has asked several designers to create a box with specific constraints to express their personal relationship with interior design. This very subjective starting point was combined with strict dimensional constraints of 20x20x20cm and a maximum weight of 2kg.
In respond to this brief, we have approached our box from a mathematic point of view.
We wanted to illustrate the idea that in interior design we sometimes try to maximize the surface, without increasing the volume, which is often restricted.
The given surface of the box is 2,400sqcm, and the volume is 8,000 cubic centimetres. Within this space, we tried to find a way to maximise the surface area, while keeping the proportions and aesthetic of the object within our personally defined parameters.
The total surface area of our faceted pieces is approx.6,200sqcm, and the total volume of solid material is approx.700 cubic centimetres, which is more than a 10 times decrease of the volume, and almost 3 times increase of the surface area.
In other words, the ratio of surface to volume in the starting cube is 2400/8000= 0.3 whereas the resulting object is 6200/700= 8.8 which is an increase of nearly 30 times.

