GUILLERMO ARANDA-MENA

In this blog I show some images of the bed I designed and built with beautiful tasmanian oak. The inspiration was a little outrigger boat that my sister gave to me when we sailed in Fiji some 10 years ago or so. Bula! Guillermo Furniture: King size bed built with Tasmanian oak.  Organic cotton matters and linen.  Design inspiration: Fijian traditional Outrigger boat. The bed is a king size and the outriggers became discrete shelving units. In this blogpost it seems appropriate to bring some of the great Georges Perec’s reflections from “Species of Spaces and other pieces”... the one titled: The Bed. “ We spend more than a third of our lives in bed. The bed is one of the rare places where we adopt roughly speaking a horizontal posture. The others are much more specialised: operating table, bench in a sauna, chaise-langue, beach, psychoanalyst couch ....  Techniques of sleeping: the idea of lying down is something natural ...

Koroipita Model Town: sustainable community project in Lautoka, Fiji [June/July 2011] I dedicate this blogpost to a recent project I worked on in Fiji, with two of my colleagues - Matt Myers / Vince Raso - and 23 of my students. It took me two years to return to Fiji . I finally got to get my hands dirty on a project I worked earlier on the drawing board - inc. supervised work on Design and Building Guidelines for Koroipita - carried out with Tim Sleeth and Ben Carr [Final Project 2010]. This time it was not on the drawing board but taking real action in-situ which was a great experience and really fun too! The houses or "bures" are minimal shelter structures not even beyond 25m 2 yet these basic homes cater for families. Each bure has two bedrooms in a single detached space and second - smaller - detached unit with kitchen, toilet and shower facilities. Both divided by an external corridor which also operates as a breezeway. The sites are ge...