i would say that i would work on any project forever probably continuously changing things
adjusting it's always something that i want to fix i think i wouldn't say anything's ever really done
i'm leia amick and we're here in my workshop in portland oregon i'm a multi-disciplinary designer
focusing mostly on furniture there are two sides to my practice one side is working with companies
mostly startup on product development the other side is more of my passion which is
creating custom one-off furniture and lighting pieces and that's what i do here in this workshop
and so i've been really influenced by kind of nordic styles it's about kind of clean lines
simple forms straightforward function it's not usually arbitrary i mean i feel like a lot of
the reason that intention is important to me and function is because of that upbringing a big part
of my process and this is actually something that i learned at risd was to start full scale as soon
as possible so make a full-size prototype so that you can see how well-balanced the different forms
are and whether or not a table is going to be racking or you need to add some supports here
there so that's really important to make sure you don't have something that is over or under built
so my favorite pieces are always custom pieces that are just made to order designed specifically
for that client i really like the the whole design process the most so occasionally i'll have clients
come and they have an idea of something that they want and so i can design kind of around their idea
but have a bit more creative freedom rather than just iterating on something that i've already done
and this one is currently being finished this is my peel credenza a relatively traditional credenza
but with an interesting door that has magnets embedded inside to create kind of a reverse
tambour motion and so it feels like it's kind of bending and breaking as you open it which is quite
a satisfying feeling and now that i have origin i can just cut the wood directly with that tool
rather than going through the hassle of creating tuplets with origin i'm able to
iterate on complex ideas quickly which means that i'll actually end up with a more successful design
because i'm not so worried about making sure that every component is correct before i send it
off for someone else to cut on a cnc or whatever other processes i need so when i say everything
has to have intention this is a good example the curvature of this joint right here actually
matches the curvature here it's a detail that people don't necessarily realize that they notice
but i think that there's kind of a subconscious part of everyone that sees these things and so
it's really important to me to make sure that there's a reason for every decision i make
traditionally if i had to test a joint or i wasn't sure about how a piece would work i would make you
know a really simplified version of that joint or that that object but with origin i'm able to
make like exactly the joint that i want to see or exactly the part pretty quickly and i don't
have to create a simplified version origin is really great because i can kind of iterate on
an idea cutting something on csc or creating really complex fixtures i can just you know
cut out a template or something really quickly and then adjust it from there without spending a lot
of time or money so here's the original elate lamp it's quite a bit larger than the one designed for
shaper origin i used to actually have to create the neck using bent lamination i also used a
circle cutting fixture for the table saw and a kind of custom pocket hole cutter it was quite a
complex process which now is very simplified using origin my thesis was about mindfulness and drawing
people into an object and then that object causing your your thoughts to change of other objects
i definitely think in 3d when i'm trying to come up with a concept and i move into modeling pretty
quickly it's a huge part of my process i also usually start with like really rough sketches
and 3-day modeling is really early in the process which is why i like to brand my pieces as like
thought-provoking i wanted to create a a table lamp that had kind of a fun character to it so
i i took the traditional forms of a light a neck and a base just a relatively traditional lampshade
and just kind of tilted tilted it up moved the neck to the side of the shade and created
a late just kind of a fun table lamp a playful table lamp before i got origin i actually have
done a lot of projects with cnc machines i've designed things specifically for that process
for companies so i was actually really excited to try origin i mean we do have space for us
dnc in here but they're so expensive and it would take away a lot of our workspace so it was really
great to get something that was smaller but had almost the same capabilities and it's easy to
make changes on the fly which you can't really do on the cnc very easily so it's a nice change you