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F3 Holds First Annual Design Competition

The deadline for submissions is April 16 for the contest, which will culminate in a live competition among five finalists on May 21.

Staff -- Interior Design, 1/28/2010 12:00:00 AM

Nancy Keatinge and Stanley Felderman, Felderman + Keatinge Associates, Steve Roth, OutThink Partners, Kim Holt, Unleashed Studio, David Hertz, Studio of Environmental Architecture, Alexander Purcell, APPRO, Leydi and Reto Eberle, F3 Foundation; photo by Brent Matsuno.

F3 Foundation is wasting no time getting down to business. Recently launched by Reed Eberle, CEO of custom furniture manufacturer dTank, the organization has already launched its first annual F3 student furniture design competition.

The F3 Awards kicked off with a launch party on January 22, and will culminate May 21 in a live competition among five finalists for cash scholarships. The lucky recipients will receive $3,500 for first place, $2,000 for second place and $1,000 for third place. Registration for the contest remains open until March 12, while the deadline for all submissions is April 15.

Judges for the competition include Airstream CEO Bob Wheeler, Studio of Environmental Architecture founder David Hertz, E! Style Network and G4 executive creative director Mark Schneider.


Alexander Purcell, APRRO, Reto and Leydi Eberle, F3 Foundation, Sean Kim, VIDA, Kim Holt, Unleashed Studios; photo by Brent Matsuno

The competition is open to all college or university undergraduate students seeking to break into furniture design. In addition to a scholarship, the first-place winner will work with dTank engineers and designers to create a prototype of their winning design.

Contestants are challenged to conceptualize both the interior and exterior of a hypothetical Music Utility Vehicle—a pop-up music store housed in an iconic Airstream Travel Trailer, intended for traveling promotional tours by musicians. They are required to design a single custom-furniture design that expresses the overall concept of the MUV, while also satisfying four specific programming needs: Play (listening stations, seating and lounge furniture), Display (digital billboard and product display for merchandise),  DJ (DJ booth, speakers and mixing station), and Pay (transaction counter for point of sale).

“In the past, furniture design was a much more integral part of the overall design, in the tradition of Eames, Wright and Schindler,” say Eberle. “In recent years, however, less focus has been given to the art of furniture design. By creating the F3 Foundation and F3 Awards, I hope that we can inspire and excite young talent to thin about form, function and the fabrication of furniture and bring back this art.”


Woodbury University students; photo by Tom Lim.

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  My name is Fred Jordan. My wife Linda and I purchased a 1970 Airstream, Land Yacht, Safari in the the summer of 2007, with the intention of fixing it up and traveling around American when we retired. We were told by the previous owners that some work had to be done.
  
  When I started taking it apart ,I realized the entire interior would have to be removed because the floor had rotted from the bottom up. We discussed how we were going to rebuild the interior when an idea came to me. I thought, why not approach Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, with a design competition and scholarship. I was put in touch with Herb Fremin, head head of Interior Design Department. He flipped over the idea. We discussed when we could bring the gutted Airstream to Wentworth, the time frame of the competition, and the amount of the scholarship and the parameters of what we wanted in the trailer. The students had never designed anything without angles and their ideas were completely out of the box.
  
  When the judging took place, Linda was so impressed she doubled the amount of the scholarship. I was out of town on family business, however when I returned home I knew she had done the right thing.
  
  The kids put the power of the internet to work for them. IKEA products played a huge amount in the interior outcome. The rules stated that all parts used had to have the correct part numbers, cost and manufacturers phone number or e-mail address.
  
  When Linda and I first met and fell madly in love, in 1981, we decided to go across country for a year. We left Boston in July of 1982 and returned in August of 1983. We camped out most of the way , staying with friend or in a motel once in a great will. The people we met all said they wished they had done it when they were our age. We told them we wished we did it in there trailers. Now we will be traveling, in a brand new 1970 Airstream Land Yacht Safari. I retire in 2008 and Linda in 2009.
  
  Last year Boston Globe correspondent,Paul E. Kandarian, did an article titled "Building a better home to head out on the range" Inthe Boston Sunday Globe, People & Places section.

  
  

  
  

  Frederick C. Jordan - 2010-02-20 23:28:00 EST
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