My Osaka Bedroom (with Pictures)

My name is Dan, i studied architecture in London but then i moved to Osaka, Japan.

Its common for apartments in Japan to come completely unfurnished, no light fittings, furniture, cooking appliances, nothing. Working to a really tight budget i decided to make all the furniture i needed - a desk, a stool, some shelves and some lampshades out of cardboard as the primary material.

This is a photo of what i've produced so far - some of the pieces are very bespoke - such as the shelves (they use no glue/mechanical fixings to hold them in place - and so are designed to fit the niches of my flat very snugly) and some are more generic, stool and desk for example.

Its still a work in progress, i intend to finish off the project by wiring the shelves with 2 lamps, theres an adjustable floorstanding lamp i'd like to make, and if i have time for anything else i'll try to produce it.

I bought a pack of 3mm single wall corrugated cardboard - 130 sheets, 800x1000mm for about £100. Thats been the main cost - i've managed to make everything out of that so far.

I design in 3D CAD (rhino) and then print templates and cut the pieces individually with a stanley knife and cutting board. Its been fairly laborious since i also work japanese office hours, i think overall i've spent about 4/5 months making it on odd weekends.

The annoying thing is that just as i'm nearing completion, we're about to leave our flat so this'll all end up in the bin probably, which is a bit gutting to say the least. I would have liked to enjoy the pieces a bit more, but as an experimental project i think it's turned out ok.

So far there's only 1 image - i will be taking more when i finish and sharing them here.

If you'd like to keeo up with the project, you can check out my website http://terrapol.com/blog/2012/08/09/my-osaka-bedroom/

Thanks for getting this far, let me know what you think! If you've any questions i'm happy to answer..