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MUT - Multifunctional Furniture System

MUT - Multifunctional Furniture System

Joel Rocha
February 28, 2019
1 Comment

Project developed as part of the master's thesis of the Industrial Design and Product course at FEUP in conjunction with the FBAUP. The "Mut" system is a medium-sized piece of furniture that brings together 4 important functionalities in a compact way, being able to be moved to other places, performing various functions.



The idea of creating this project arose from the need for space savings that is increasingly scarce, especially in large cities, where housing is becoming smaller and the profitability of space is very important.
As a solution was developed a set of multifunctional parts that allows each part can perform various functions, in order to save space and thus providing a considerable improvement of the habitability of spaces with small dimensions.
The contemporary and minimalist design has been consciously and intentionally adopted to allow it to fit more easily into any urban dwelling. The chromatic choice of the various elements has been designed in such a way as to have an original character, but at the same time not to limit the decoration of the surrounding spaces. Regarding the materials, the choice went through something that was relatively inexpensive, managing a price / quality ratio, allowing the largest number of people to purchase this type of parts.


The initial creative process was initiated by interesting dialogs between the brain and hands that were drawing sketches on several sheets of paper, this dialogue remained throughout the process. After many skins and some drawings, the need arose to start testing the shapes and dimensions, which led to the creation of 3D drawings in solidworks and in Autodesk Fusion 360. After the development of several models and solutions, the drawings were imported into the keyshot where several tests were done with colors, materials and environments, so that the most accurate notion of the project was obtained after performing the renders of the object.






Reactions to the project have been very positive, and the first and most important of all was the evaluation made by the jury in defense of the master's thesis to the project, obtaining an excellent grade. In addition to the feedback obtained by the university community, some partners and professionals have made several comments on the project emphasizing the pertinence of the topic addressed together with the pragmatism and functionality of it.
Throughout the development of each project we are acquiring new skills and accumulating experience that will be useful to use in future projects. In this specific case, the greatest learning was undoubtedly to respect and observe the needs of the target public, to understand measures of parameterized objects and to simplify the forms to the maximum. In constructive terms I call special attention to the choice of the right fittings, in this case there are still things to improve in this aspect.

With a constant evolution in terms of forms and concepts it is extremely important to follow the development process of a project with the construction of several models on a real scale and small scale to get a clearer view of the project. The combination of the dimensions, the strength of the apples and proportions, allows to verify its stability in structural terms, orienting in a sustainable way the type of fittings, materials and hardware and way of construction to be adopted in the later phase of production.

Joel Rocha

Born in 1984 in Portugal, he graduated in Graphic Design from E.S.E.I.G in 2007 and since then has held positions in this area in several companies. In 2014 he founded the Furniture brand "FARPA". In 2018 he finished his master's degree in Industrial and Product Design in F.E.U.P.

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