David Trubridge Internship

On the 22nd of June I travelled to Hastings from Auckland for a week long internship with David Trubridge. David is a very well-known New Zealand and Internationally respected furniture designer that has been operating out of Hastings for many years now. He was very kind to have let me observe and help out in the workshop for a week and i really appreciate the oppourtunity. He has been to many Milan shows and has won numerous awards for his designs. David has always been an inspirational designer to me and partially influenced me to take the 3D design course i am now studying.

I found my time at Davids very valueable in learning how a design business and workshop is run. It was alot of fun being able to help work on the CNC machine, put together lights, assemble packaging and shipping containers, and get to know the staff at the workshop. Since spending the week with David and his team i actually got a whole new appreciation for his furniture and lighting. The amount of hand craft that is still implemented into creating his designs is remarkable. For example, his lights that are constructed with rivets, when looking at them in the shop or seeing them in a magazine its very easy to glance over the fact that ever single one of those rivets were done by hand by a worker in little Hastings. Or the commision bench they were making at the time, in which ever single length of wood had to be steem bent and hand shaped to fit the structure. I think i came to this level of apprecaition once having first hand experience in the construction.

I thoughourly enjoyed my time spent with David and his team and would like to thank all of them for being so welcoming and friendly.

Reel to Real

The shelving units discuss a number of different aspects of sustainable design, predominately utilizing the ‘re-use’ and ‘re-make’ notions. The display below was made up of 661 cassette tapes, comprising of a selection of Amway business tapes, different music styles and family events. The idea surrounding this work is based on storage. The primary function for cassette tapes is storage, it’s an audible vessel for favourite music, information and important events in a persons’ life which often provoke strong notions of nostalgia. This work is now a visual means of storage for memorable items rather than an audible documentation of them. It’s an old, out-dated medium for storage but is now being re-used to continue to serve the same function it was designed for, just in a different manner.

The components can be arranged in a number of different ways to appear as cogs and wheels, meshing together in reference to the original mechanism of a cassette player.

The tape shelves are available and are made to order. If interested please contact me by email: timwebberdesign@gmail.com