Constellations collaborate with NTU product design student
Constellations recently supported university product design student, Adam Wolstenholme, with his final year project. Influenced by his time spent working in Stockholm, on a placement year selling mid-century Scandinavian furniture, Adam had chosen to craft a dining chair with a strong emphasis on using only British-grown materials.
Adam had made good progress on his prototype within the facilities provided at Nottingham Trent University, like steam bending the arm rest out of the wood, moulding some plywood, and veneering the seat and the back of the chair. However, this was the first time that Adam had tackled a furniture brief he’d set for himself, and he needed to figure out how to make the legs and frame. It’s those essential parts that have all sorts of intricate details on and so Adam was hoping to CNC prototype it out of the ash timber he’d sourced himself. It was at this point that Adam hit a roadblock when he was told that the University’s CNC machine was not working.
Through his NTU tutor, Grant Baker, Adam was put in touch with Constellations, asked what came next, Adam said:
“Basically I reached out to Constellations and spoke to Owen Dale, Operations Director. Owen explained that they didn’t have a CNC machine that could carry out the job, but there was an offer of well, if you can come to our workshop and you’re on board with sitting down, going over all of the blueprints that you’ve made, sort of discussing how we can make this by hand, we can work collaboratively to piece together the frame components“.
What followed was a month-long collaboration, where Adam was made to feel like part of the team and got to understand the inner workings of a UK specialist in the design and install of contemporary education and creative technologies environments. Adam had a lot of great things to say about the experience, he said:
“Pretty much from the moment I walked through the door and filled in the sign in sheet, Owen spotted me and came straight out to greet me. He was very approachable, introduced me to literally everyone from the Managing Director and the workshop team, to the designers in the office, and step by step went through the induction process.
“It felt like I was being allowed to really join in with the team, and it made me feel very comfortable in asking questions. They took a great interest in me and my work, and it made it easy to just turn up on the bus and push on with the project as I went back and forth between NTU and Constellations. They even helped with transporting the materials from A to B, I can’t thank them enough”.
With the support of the team, Adam managed to finish his bespoke, hand-crafted dining chair, made out of 100% British-grown ash timber. Asked for his thoughts on the end product, Adam said:
“Oh I am absolutely delighted! Seeing what I’d conceptualised theoretically in the virtual world of CAD drawings and physical drawings, and then having that materialise into a physical thing that actually functions as I intended – it perfectly fulfilled my vision.
“Without Constellations I wouldn’t have had as much confidence that everything would fit together like it did. Yes, I had to do some troubleshooting at times when things didn’t work the way that I wanted them to, however, the team were of great support in helping me figure them out, with literally zero compromise. Thank you to everyone for their support.”
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