When is a yellow Brisbane City Council bus stop bin not a bin? When it has been turned into a winning piece of furniture by interior design students from Queensland University of Technology.
Style-astute Brisbane residents could be among the first to own a trendy seating and storage module created by up-and-coming designers after their work was chosen by local furniture manufactures Blok Furniture for production.
A team of four final-year interior design students from QUT designed Shoebox, a moveable furniture module that combines seating with storage for shoe shops.
Their design, along with another QUT student furniture design, was chosen from recent InDesign exhibitions in Brisbane to be exhibited at a furniture industry competition in Perth.
Team member Jo Waterhouse said that student teams then competed against each other to mould their creative concept into a commercially viable design for Blok Furniture to produce for private residences.
"Shoebox evolved out of an interior design project, for which we had to use recycled materials that could be sourced for free," she said.
"We had to pick a material and play with the quality of that material.
"We were searching for something that was an everyday object, so we could change its use and identity.
"One day, I was sitting at a bus stop and noticed the rectangular yellow bin. It had a fantastic shape and colour, a hinged door and it was a bit funky with a stencilled man on the side. It is a bit of a Brisbane icon."
Upon contacting the Brisbane City Council, the team found that the bins were being phased out and were told they could have their pick of the thousands that were no longer needed on the streets.
"We experimented with the weight they could hold and we wanted to make the most of the hinged doors," Ms Waterhouse said.
"We realised that it was good for seating and storage and thought that it would be good in shoe stores. Rather than having to walk out the back of the shop to get pairs of shoes, storage and seating are in the same piece of furniture.
"The four-module shoe store piece uses 14 bins, with castor wheels and MDF board coated in a veneer.
"For Blok, we redesigned the module into a coffee table and seat, needing only two bins to make it more appropriate for mass production."
Ms Waterhouse said the item will go into production next year and should be released in 2010.
Media contact: Rachael Wilson, QUT media officer, 07 3138 1150 or rachael.wilson@qut.edu.au.
**High res images of Ms Waterhouse and her teammates available for media use.
