A Piece of the Puzzle
Walking through the halls of CIA, Cuffaro makes frequent stops to discuss students' works that are on display. He's proud of his students, and it shows. Amid the students' studio space – each student has a private studio – Cuffaro unearths a rustic, organic wooden table. It's compact and the materials give it a warm patina. "Our staff offices are going to be smaller, so the desk was designed where the chairs nestle completely under the desk, so you wouldn't even know they are there, so you have more space," says Cuffaro, removing and returning the chairs from beneath the desk.
The "Nestle Desk" was designed by a student, Jon Janke, and built with materials supplied by A Piece of Cleveland.
APOC is part of GrowthRing Enterprises, an initiative to repurpose discarded building materials for use in industry, office and home. "The main focus of GRE from the onset was finding uses for lumber and other materials from the estimated 15,000 homes that will be torn down in Cleveland, and currently being disposed of in landfills," says Aaron Gogolin, co-founder of APOC. "We conceived APOC as a retail manufacturer of home and office furnishings that could employ a number of semi-skilled workers."
For more than two years, custom work has been the bulk of APOC's business, though retail aspirations are afoot, and a new space is scheduled to open next month at East 49th Street and St. Clair Avenue in Cleveland. Cuffaro contacted APOC about furnishing another space.
"We're building a new building, and we're going to need new furniture for the building, so we contacted APOC," says Cuffaro, noting CIA's plans to modernize and unify the two campuses currently spread across the McCullough building on Euclid Avenue and the Gund Building on East Boulevard. "We're designing furniture for the campus that's made from recycled materials." The plan calls for the creation of furnishings that can be produced in the hundreds through the establishment of a manufacturing network, connecting APOC with Amish manufacturers, for example. It will expand APOC's horizons, furnish the school and enrich students.
Wood Work
"APOC sponsored a furniture project that was assigned to my class," says Wendy Birchfield, an industrial design major focusing on product design, and among those tasked with designing a new piece of furniture for the CIA campus. "We researched different areas of the school, and each designed a piece of furniture for an area of our choice."
Cuffaro shifts his attention to a desk (pictured) for students. It's tidy, compact and functional, though it has definite character, the wood accentuating the somehow timeless yet contemporary design. It's Birchfield's design.
"My dad loves woodworking and built many furniture pieces for our home … he always modeled his pieces after Shaker furniture," says Birchfield. "He built me a Shaker-style writing desk when I was a little girl. My design was inspired by the desk my dad built for me.
"I allowed it to inform my design because of its simplicity and efficient use of storage," she adds. "I combined the Shaker aesthetic with a more contemporary feel." When the new furniture is completed, students will owe much of their functional storage to the work of Birchfield. She owes much of her structured design thoughts to Cuffaro.
Moving through the studio space, Cuffaro reveals another student-designed furnishing made of APOC lumber. The "Basqule Work Station" was designed by student Mat Gurda for design students. It was also created in appreciation of the space concerns. It features a display wall and a locking cabinet for storing computers and artist tools. More important, it moves on wheels, and is stackable with other stations of the same design. It's a design that will invariably nurture the genius of future generations of design students, which is not bad for a class project.
"The students have come up with fantastic designs, but lack the carpentry skills and experience to know the best joinery and construction of their pieces," says Gogolin. "We have given them the guidance in their classes, but now [we] will work with Dan [Cuffaro] to engineer the pieces, so that they are cost effectively produced and durable."
The project represents a grand vision, though Cuffaro's penchant for finessing creative impulses with adaptive practicality keeps all parties grounded, focused. "It was pretty ambitious being that we were working with students without real world experience, and what we are doing here, repurposing wood from condemned homes, is a concept not generally used when thinking of furniture for an institution," says Gogolin. "But with the CIA faculty's guidance, they exceeded our expectations."
This feature is part one in a three-part series looking at how the industrial design department at the Cleveland Institute of Art is engaging students, faculty, local business and more to shape Northeast Ohio. The next features will explore how the school honors one of Cleveland's greatest designers, while developing new home wares you can expect to see in stores this fall; and how the future is quite literally riding on the wheels of CIA students.
