SEALED WITH CARE

How can public seating become a sustainable and meaningful art piece?

WHAT
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FROM PAPER TO FURNITURE

Sealed With Care is a bespoke, custom-made bench designed and manufactured to showcase the history of Australia Post. Shaped in the form of the Australia Post logo, it is covered in paper mache from various Australia Post journals and magazines. It serves as a public seating showpiece unique to Australia post and is located in the Australia Post Support Center’s reception area.

WHY
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PRINT MEDIA OF THE PAST

Throughout its history, Australia Post has been about connecting people and communication through various means and methods. A large portion of that was achieved in the form of physical media such as letters, postcards, journals, magazines and more. Today in the digital age, a lot of legacy physical media remains unused, raising a question of waste and sustainability.

Sealed With Care uses these unused physical media, predominantly journals and magazines as part of its materiality. Layers of past content and stories build up the surface of the bench, encased in a protective sealant. It captures a sliver of content and history from the period of these journals and magazines, presented in a non-linear fashion for anyone to look at.

Overall, Sealed With Care is a celebration of physical media, history and sustainability incorporated into a practical furniture that can be utilised.

HOW
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DESIGN & FABRICATION

These waffle structures were also 3D modelled and designed in Rhino 3D. These digital models were then prepared for CNC routing, allowing precise and quick fabrication of the fairly complex curved structures of the logo. Throughout the digital workflow, various iterative adjustments and corrections to the design allowed a quick turnaround of the physical fabrication for the furniture piece.

Once the CNC routing was completed, the frame of the bench was hand assembled into the complete physical form. Here, the team gathered to carry out a common, age-old analogue art making process: paper mache. Pages of journals and magazines donated by Australia Post were carefully applied on with glue and binding agents. This manual process was also a curative one; at various stages of layering, the team would assess the balance of color, text and imagery in the composition of the bench. Once they were satisfied with the paper mache, the whole furniture was sealed in a waterproof sealant to protect the paper mache.

Overall, Sealed With Care is a harmonious blend of digital and analogue techniques carried out in stages. The project achieves the creation of a uniquely Australia Post seating piece, retaining the history of physical print media in a sustainable manner.

A combination of digital and analogue design and fabrication processes were employed in the creation of Sealed With Care. It began conceptually as a functional public seating that had to be uniquely Australia Post. The form was then derived from the logo of Australia Post.

Using Rhino 3D, a digital modelling software, various iterations of the scale and shape of the form were explored rapidly. The structure of the bench is a waffle frame structure, designed for maximum material efficiency; lightweight but strong to support the weight of people sitting on it.