Caterpillar Bar Unit by Priyam Doshi is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2024 Bronze A' Design Award in Furniture Design Competition Category.
BronzeFurniture· 2024
Caterpillar Bar Unit
by Priyam Doshi
Client: Name Place Animal Thing
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Furniture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #160282The Design
About Caterpillar Bar Unit
The caterpillar stands innocently in the room until you give it a spin to reveal its mischievous charm. It acts as a sculptural piece with a hidden bar. What’s your hidden treasure? The Caterpillar is meticulously handcrafted using white ash wood and is finished with an Italian water based matte coating that highlights its curves and quirky presence. The legs of the caterpillar act as knobs, which are used to revolve the bar. The bar segments are precisely engineered for flawless turning when given a spin. The caterpillar has provisions to stock 30 to 40 bottles, wine, and other glasses.
The Recognition
About the Bronze A' Design Award
Caterpillar Bar Unit is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. Caterpillar Bar Unit is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. Caterpillar Bar Unit splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Interviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
The idea was to design a quirky and fun product The inspiration for the design was a caterpillar.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
The idea was to create a "fun-ctional" product—a statement piece of furniture that is fun yet highly functional.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
The future plan is to sell the design internationally.
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to transforming the Caterpillar Bar Unit from a sculptural piece into a functional bar through its rotating mechanism is fascinating - could you walk us through the engineering challenges you faced in achieving this seamless transformation?
I won’t lie, it was tough! Initially, we tried steam bending wood for the caterpillar modules, but it didn’t yield consistent results, so we pivoted to barrel-making techniques for better precision. The rotating mechanism was another challenge—finding the right hardware, ensuring smooth operation, and designing for easy maintenance took extensive research and testing. Balancing creativity, functionality, and durability made this piece a rewarding challenge.
The Caterpillar Bar Unit's design brilliantly challenges traditional bar furniture aesthetics - what inspired you to break away from conventional boxy shapes and embrace this playful, biomorphic form inspired by nature?
My natural style is being playful with designs. Whenever I design the intent is to built product which generate curiosity/ intrigue and an element of play. I always want the user to have a sense of joy and fun when using th e product. I wanted to break the boundaries and design something which Fun yet super functional. That let to taking inspiration from nature
How did your background in production engineering influence your material choice of white ash wood and the precise engineering required for the Caterpillar Bar Unit's flawless rotating segments?
My natural design style leans toward being playful and creating products that spark curiosity and intrigue. I always aim to bring a sense of joy and fun to the user experience. With the Caterpillar Bar Unit, I wanted to break away from the predictable, boxy aesthetics of traditional bar furniture and create something that was not only functional but also brought a smile to people's faces. Drawing inspiration from nature's organic forms allowed me to design something that feels alive, playful, and full of character.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The caterpillar bar unit is a statement piece of furniture that is not only fun but also functional. The sculptural looking piece can actually be turned to reveal a hidden bar unit, which astonishes everyone as no one expects it. The Caterpillar is meticulously handcrafted and precisely engineered for flawless turning of the bar segments. The legs of the caterpillar act as knobs, which are used to revolve the bar. The caterpillar has provisions to stock 30 to 40 bottles, wine, and other glasses
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Size
Width 615 mm x Depth 615 mm x Height 1665 mm
Material White Ashwood and brass finished spherical handles
Finish Italian water based matt finish - Tags
- Bar furniture, Bar cabinet, Bar unit, Statement furniture, Wood furniture, Luxury furniture, Artsy furniture
- Production Technology
- The Caterpillar bar unit is handmade by carpenters in a factory forming, carving and cutting and joining white ash wood using carpentry techiniques. Finish is Italian Water Based Matte Finish.
- Design Challenge
- The creative challenge was to not only break away from the stereotypical shape of boxy bar units but also to make the bar unit highly functional. The trial and error of steam bending white ash wood was the hardest and most challenging part, which was not very successful in the first piece, but we are working on it to make it successful. Also, joining and finishing the wood pieces together to make the circular modules.
- Research
- The online and offline research study was conducted on furniture marketplaces and physical stores to understand if there were any multifunctional cabinets available in the market. Visual data was collected via websites and by taking pictures of products in retail stores and homes within the personal network. One of the insights was that there were hardly any bar cabinets that were statement pieces or unique while also being highly functional. That served as our starting point to create a statement furniture piece that is also good with functionality.
- Inspiration
- The inspiration was to add fun to the boring mundane objects around us. The form is inspired by a caterpillar. Also, there are few products in the market that are statement furniture pieces but also offer good functionality. That was the starting point. The Caterpillar bar is designed to be a FUNctional piece, fun yet highly functional. The idea was also to add an element of surprise, as people will not anticipate that such a sculptural piece would actually turn out to be a bar unit
- Project Duration
- The Project Started in November 2022 & Finished in November 2022 and was exhibited at Raw Collaborative 5th Edition in India. (An exhibition)
- Operation Flow
- The Caterpillar bar unit stands tall as a sculptural bar unit, which, when turned using the knobs, reveals itself as a bar unit to start the party with an element of surprise. The caterpillar unit consists of 4 modules, out of which the top two modules turn together and the bottom two turn together. The top module has provisions for hanging wine glasses and also for keeping other drinking glasses. Wine bottles can be placed horizontally in the third module of the caterpillar bar.
- Patents
- © 2022, Name Place Animal Thing. All rights reserved.
- Team Members
- Priyam Doshi
- Image Credits
- Image #1: Creator Priyam Doshi, Photographer Isha Shah
Image #2: Creator Priyam Doshi, Photographer Isha Shah
Image #3: Creator Priyam Doshi, Photographer Isha Shah
Image #4: Creator Priyam Doshi, Photographer Isha Shah
Image #5: Creator Priyam Doshi, Photographer Isha Shah
Video Credits: Priyanka Itadkar.
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