Technological development offers new opportunities that could changedesign processes. The present study explores the possibilities of technologies likevirtual reality and 3D scan in the furniture design process. For this purpose, a cocreation process with help of new technologies was carried out from initial ideationto 3D modelling. Each tool has been characterized in terms of user experiencemeasured by questionnaire. This research validates a design process of furniturebased on immersive technology and provide some recommendations for theimplementation and improvement of this process.
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With growing environmental concerns, upcycling has become an important theme in literature and practice. Upcycling can help slow and close resource cycles through product life-extension. Cities offer opportunities for upcycling initiatives and seek to tackle challenges in urban solid waste management by encouraging entrepreneurs to create value from local waste streams in urban resource centres and circular crafts centres. However, little is known about what drives urban upcycling and which barriers and drivers occur. This study explores urban upcycling in the context of the Dutch furniture industry, since The Netherlands positions itself as a ‘circular economy hotspot’ and furniture offers promising opportunities and best practices for upcycling. The analysis of 29 semi-structured interviews with experts engaged in urban upcycling reveals personal motives, drivers and barriers. Personal motives include (1) a personal purpose to ‘do good’, (2) an urge to challenge the status quo and (3) learning and inspiring by doing. Key drivers entail opportunities to (1) engage in collaborative experimentation, (2) participate in cross-sectoral local networks, (3) develop resource-based adaptive competences, (4) respond to increasing demand for upcycled products and (5) make social business activities financially viable. Key barriers perceived by upcycling experts include (1) limitations in resource availability, (2) increasing capacity requirements, (3) negative public quality perception, (4) limited marketing competences and (5) an unequal playing field. This study contributes with a comprehensive definition of urban upcycling and a structured overview of key factors that drive and constrain urban upcycling.
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Due to climate change, rising temperatures lead to more extreme heat stress in urban areas. Last summer, there were poignant images of people looking for shade in cities. Trees are effective measures to provide shade and decrease the perceived temperature. However, trees cannot grow in healthy conditions due to the conflicting interests of the many functions and infrastructure in cities. Also time is a limiting factor; before trees are fully grown and can fulfil its various functions (shade, biodiversity, appearance), it takes not only physical space but also time. Alternative interventions, such as a pergola, can help increase urban resilience by reducing the negative impacts of climate change.Pergolas are known, for example, in more southern Europe cities. However, despite the described promising effects of the pergola in documents to reduce heat stress and provide shade, we barely see these structures in the Dutch public space. We all know the pergola as an esthetical piece in the backyard where it provides shade, privacy and contributes to well-being, but they are not widely used in the public realm.Next to that, there are few or no known preconditions for an urban pergola. The functions that an urban pergola can offer go beyond providing shade. The pergola might help reduce noise and pollution, provide a meeting place in a neighbourhood and support biodiversity. Since space is scarce in cities where many different interests come together, we want to explore the potential contribution of an urban pergola to different problems. Therefore, at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, we have worked on an urban pergola as a real 'boundary object' where we bring education, research, municipalities, and entrepreneurs across disciplines and sectors together to discuss the potential of such an object.For this workshop, we would like to show our first results of this interdisciplinary action research and continue answering the question: how can a pergola fit in the Dutch urban area? Therefore, we would like to explore the functions and forms of the urban pergola with stakeholders, such as municipalities, entrepreneurs, citizens, students, and researchers all from different disciplines. The desired outcome of this workshop is a joint proposal for implementing urban pergolas that can meet the versatile needs of cities and thereby make cities more liveable.
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Personal possessions of nursing home residents can contribute to their sense of home. This study investigated which of the personal belongings were considered most important, and if these items indeed contributed to a sense of home. A qualitative research was conducted with 27 nursing home residents. Photographs, paintings, and pieces of furniture are objects with sentimental value. The television set is valued for its practical function. Residents of larger rooms have more flexibility in bringing along personal items, including pieces of furniture. The results of this study can be used for the design of nursing homes or for making informed choices during the process of institutionalization.
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Within European cities, entrepreneurs engage in private and public collaborative initiatives that work towards reducing local solid waste streams (Futurium, 2019). Furniture and interior design products account for nearly 50% of these waste streams, making them a key priority on the EU agenda to prevent climate change (Vanacore et al, 2021). New legislation to extend producer responsibility and reduce waste incineration is developing on a national level (PBL, 2021) and collaborative initiatives for urban upcycling are emerging (Ministerie I&W, 2023; Futurium, 2019). Business models to support upcycling are evolving, but their configuration and effectiveness is little understood.
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Upcycling has been embraced by circular economy enthusiasts, policy-makers and collaborative initiatives across Europe. Early studies describe upcycling as a concept aimed at resource conservation by keeping products, components and materials at their highest potential value across consecutive product lifecycles, with zero-negative or even potential positive impact on the natural environment. Similarly, more recent literature on the circular economy views upcycling as a strategy to slow and close resource cycles through product life-extension approaches, such as reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and repurpose. With growing environmental concerns, upcycling has become a re-emerging theme in literature and practice. Cities offer opportunities for an increasing number of upcycling initiatives, but little is known about what manifestations of upcycling occur specifically in urban areas or how these urban upcycling initiatives emerge. For example, so-called Urban Resource Centers seek to tackle challenges in urban solid waste management by encouraging entrepreneurs to create value from local waste streams. Therefore, our objective is to address this literature gap and explore manifestations of upcycling in a city context by means of qualitative research, following a case-study approach based on data collected from research archives and 17 preliminary interviews with entrepreneurs and experts in urban upcycling of furniture and interior design products. This study contributes to a structured overview of urban upcycling initiatives and the internal and external factors that drive entrepreneurial initiatives and development. Future work will build on this study to make urban upcycling initiatives more widespread and impactful to deliver on their environmental and social goals.
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In this study we examined how physical features of a natural setting influenced perceived coherence and three positive outcome variables: preference, pleasure, and (self-reported) restoration. Furthermore, we examined the mediating role of perceived coherence. One hundred thirty-one students evaluated three (virtual) natural environments: an environment with metal furniture, an environment with wooden furniture, and an environment without furniture. Results showed that metal furniture negatively influenced perceived coherence as well as preference, pleasure and restoration, compared to wooden furniture and no furniture. Perceived coherence of the environment with wooden furniture was significantly higher than the environment with metal furniture, but significantly lower than the environment without furniture. We did not find support that preference for, and experienced pleasure and restoration in the environment with wooden furniture differed from the environment without furniture. Perceived coherence mediated the effect of (metal) furniture on preference, pleasure, and restoration. Scientific and practical implications are discussed.
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Creative SMEs are heavily focusing on the creating process designing new products and services. Consequently, their managers tend to loose contact with crucial management issues. Especially their knowledge of the financial aspects of their business can be so limited that they fail to connect with the financial viability of their business, which can lead to serious business problems. This paper draws on a number of studies that examine the role of outsiders -contracted professional service providers- in relation to business success of SMEs. In the light of the potential growth of Flemish creative SMEs on international markets the question can be raised as to what extent outsiders, and more specifically financial service providers like accountants and banks, contribute to the export success of these firms. In this paper therefore the role played by accountants and banks was explored to solve export-related questions by small furniture designers in Flanders, Belgium. Export can be considered as the most successful growth and therefore raises interesting management issues for creative SMEs. Little is known about the content and intensity of services of accountants and bank employees in relation to export-related questions of owner-managers of small creative firms. In order to examine the fit between supply and demand the focus is on outsider contribution during six phases of export.
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Nursing home residents with dementia face challenges in adapting to a new living environment and feeling at home. Due to communicative limitations, people with dementia after often left out of design processes. The aim of this study is to investigate the housing needs in relation to the interior design on the object level and design level. Based on the principles of practice development, seven residents participated in a creative workshop in which they produced a mood board, followed by subsequent interviews. People with dementia value colours in the built environments, their own practical pieces of furniture, and personal belongings like pictures of relatives. Their sense of home turned out to depend more on the social environment than the built environment. We conclude that involving older people with dementia can lead to a better match between the needs and design solutions and can stimulate the dialogue between design stakeholders.
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The two-dimensional vehicle routing problem (2L-VRP) is a realistic extension of the classical vehicle routing problem where customers’ demands are composed by sets of non-stackable items. Examples of such problems can be found in many real-life applications, e.g. furniture or industrial machinery transportation. Often, these real-life instances have to deal with uncertainty in many aspects of the problem, such as variable traveling times due to traffic conditions or customers availability. We present a hybrid simheuristic algorithm that combines biased-randomized routing and packing heuristics within a multi-start framework. Monte Carlo simulation is used to deal with uncertainty at different stages of the search process. With the goal of minimizing total expected cost, we use this methodology to solve a set of stochastic instances of the 2L-VRP with unrestricted oriented loading. Our results show that accounting for systems variability during the algorithm search yields more robust solutions with lower expected costs.
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