Imagine you want a desk from a designer in London. Rather than ship the product across the world, you can now simply download a computer file, present this to a local maker, select the materials and finish and be presented with a locally produced, custom made designer product.

It’s a more social, environmental and economic way of getting your bespoke furniture.

The team at Blueprint 4D has just used this concept to produce designer desks for a local Sydney company. The Working Party, digital agency based in Sydney, used Opendesk, to purchase a ‘digital desk’ from a UK designer and commissioned our team to make it for them. Having downloaded the file we were able to make the desk in house, here in Sydney, to the client’s specification.

Blueprint 4D made three of the Original Opendesk – a desk designed to be a flexible four person workstation. Different set ups enable different options for how the four workers interconnect with their neighbours. Several desks can be connected in line to allow for more work stations.

The desks are length 2,400mm, height 720mm and width 1,690mm . Each required cutting 4 sheets of 12mm birch plywood using our large Haas Gr510 CNC router. Each of these sheets produced numerous parts which were CNC routed, then carefully hand finished by our model makers.

Blueprint 4D used our large Haas Gr510 to CNC machine the plywood sheets

Plywood parts off the CNC machine

Dry fit in progress

Dry fit prior to sanding and painting

The client requested a satin finish, non-yellowing, hard wearing urethane clear coat. Two coats were applied to achieve the desired effect.

Finally, our team delivered and assembled the desks to their Sydney CBD location. The result was high quality designer furniture, made on demand for the client and customised for the client, at an affordable price.

The simple model of connecting international designer to local maker to client was a highly effective way for a beautiful piece of design to be shared across the world.

The potential here for the design world is limitless. Although Opendesk is firstly focusing on furniture, as new technologies develop there is scope to expand this concept across all design platforms.

Their process empowers consumers and users of design with the tools and resources necessary to design and produce their own mass customised design pieces. Such a change is supported by today’s internet infrastructure and the development of online communities and behaviour. It’s also supported by the growing movement towards more environmental, economic and social ways of doing business.

We have a feeling we’ll be producing a lot more of these types of products in the near future and we say bring it on!

You can also read the original version of this post on Blueprint 4D’s blog
Photos by Rory Gardiner