Project Overview

The Moo collection is a unique range of furniture designed and made by Kenan Wang in Sydney.
The Moo collection is made from solid Australian timber. Kenan Wang created the Moo furniture collection taking inspiration from traditional Chinese furniture, and applying it in modern way. The elements are cut and joined precisely to create simple and aesthetic furniture pieces.

Organisation

Kenan Wang

Team

Kenan Wang

Kenan Wang is an industrial designer and artist from China. He came to Australia 6 years ago. He finished my Fine Art Graduated Certificate and bachelor of Industrial Design in China. Before he moved to Australia, he worked in professional field of Transportation Design, Industrial Design, Exhibition Design and Fine Art in China. Being trained as artist and Transportation Designer, Kenan has a very good understanding of shape and form. He mastered high-class surface CAD modeling skill, Reserve engineering skill and digital fabrication skill, which helped him to realize his design and art idea.

2008, Kenan finished his master degree at UTS. “Twist bench” was his final capstone project. It is his first piece of furniture, which was exhibited Workshopped 08 during Sydney Design Weeks 08 where it won the Grand prize of People’s Choice Award.

From early 2008 to early 2009, Kenan completed a certificate 4 Fine Arts course at TAFE. During the study period in TAFE, His “Eco- twinkle’ was selected for Kokuyo Design Award to final stage in 2008 and won Honorable Mentions Prize in Seoul Design Competition 2009.

Project Brief

The Moo collection is a unique range of furniture designed and made by Kenan Wang in Sydney.

The Moo collection is made from solid Australian timber. Kenan Wang created the Moo furniture collection taking inspiration from traditional Chinese furniture, and applying it in modern way. The elements are cut and joined precisely to create simple and aesthetic furniture pieces.

The Moo rack has a similar footprint to other clothes stands however provides considerably more function. The top hangers can be used for clothes, coats, and hats. The top junction can be used for hanging scarfs, coat hangers and other short hanging things. The bottom hangers can be used for bags and other heavier objects. The bottom junction can be used for hanging umbrellas, suit travel bag, and other heavy objects. The Space underneath the rack can be used for bags, shoes and other floor objects.

Project Innovation / Need

The idea of the Moo collection is to create a new Chinese style inspired furniture collection. Classic Chinese timber was created for traditional Chinese living environment. However, most of people won’t have much chance to live in traditional Chinese building any more. The whole range was created to fit into modern living environment. There are more consideration of carbon foot, cost, function and aesthetic through whole process.

Design Challenge

How to make the Moo collection functional, aesthetic and still sustainable is very challenge.
How to fit traditional Chinese timber furniture tendons and mortise joint and furniture philosophy into works properly is second challenge.
The whole collection is designed from similar elements. All classic Chinese timber joints are cut by hand carefully by very experience carpenter. In order to make the Moo collection more sustainable, all elements are created to rectangle shape. So, how to simplify manufacture process as much as possible is big challenge too.

Sustainability

Sustainability is critical through whole creation process of Moo.
Frist, Moo collection is made from Tasmania Oak. They are 100% or 99% timber based. They are all recyclable.
Second, all parts are designed to rectangle shape for reasons. Rectangle is easier to cut and work with. All parts are design to fit raw material size. There is much lesser material wastage to compare with other shape. There is lesser energy involved during whole manufacture process too. The whole collection tried to keep carbon foot print cost as low as possible.
Third, the Moo collection is designed to Flat pack. Not like other classic Chinese furniture very heavy and difficult to transport, the Moo collection is design to save space.