Functional quality of furniture

Among the groups of objects that belong to the apartment, furniture occupies a special position. Without it, it is impossible to do. An apartment without pictures on the wall, without a radio or without carpets can be imagined, and without beds, chairs, tables, cabinets and shelves the apartment will not be a dwelling.

This happens because the furniture has the most important function - it helps a person and his things to take a definite position in space, settle themselves and arrange everything necessary for work, rest, sleep, eating food for all those processes without which human existence is impossible.

In the eyes of the consumer, the main value of a furniture product in its purpose. For the sake of beauty alone, furniture is not purchased. First of all, it should be useful, and then a beautiful Designer cannot fail to take into account the practical value of the furniture, as the ease of furnishing an apartment depends on it.

By appointment, all the furniture is divided into two main groups. The first group is storage items for household items (cabinets of all kinds, cabinets, shelves). The second group - products support (tables, beds, furniture for sitting). Another classification of furniture is possible, but it will no longer be based on such a clear distinction between the functions of the products.

The consumer value of a furniture product is determined by how well it meets its intended purpose, and how fully it satisfies the functional requirements imposed by a person on a product of a given purpose. These requirements can be grouped as follows.

Hygienic

These requirements affect the architecture of modern furniture. Consider a group of storage products.

The expediency of the parameters. Each material item, including a furniture item, can be measured, as a result of which a group of numerical characteristics can be collected that give us an idea of ​​this item. Such characteristics can be the width, height, depth, length, weight, angles of inclination and dimensions of individual parts.

In everyday life is a large number of things with different sizes and shapes. The size of the new product, the designer chooses, depending on the functional purpose. If the product is intended for storage of things, then their sizes should be studied. Only then can you designate the dimensions of all cabinet elements. Further we will use this term, meaning by it any storage product.

How large should shelves and drawers be in cabinets?

The simplest thing is to count them on large objects (small ones will always be placed). The creators of the so-called dining buffets once walked along this easy, but completely wrong path. For example, the depth of the lower cabinet in such buffets reached 600 mm, which made it possible to store there even pots. There are not many such large things, there are many more small items in use, and it is less convenient to store them in a deep closet. The height of the compartments between the shelves was designed for carafes, but there are piles next to the decanter, and for them there is no need for a height of 300-400 mm.

Now furniture designers determine first what items will be stored in the closet and how, in order to designate the most suitable dimensions for each compartment, drawer, shelf, etc.

They use regulatory documents that establish the minimum size of offices for storing basic household items. Design standards protect the designer from errors and provide him with sufficient freedom to vary the sizes, if this is required by the unification of parts.

Some sizes of household items do not change over time, others are subject to more frequent changes. The most stable can be considered the size of the bulk of the books, dishes. Collectible old dishes, old books (with the exception of unique) are perfectly placed in modern cabinets. More changeable clothing sizes. If the trendsetters in clothing reintroduce long dresses and dohi, the norms will have to be revised.

Capacity cabinets extremely important quality. It is capacity, i.e., the ability of a cabinet to hold a certain number of objects, when comparing various models, it often appears in the eyes of the consumer as the main advantage of the product. The capacity of the cabinet can be increased in two ways. The first is to make a larger cabinet. The capacity of the cabinet will increase in proportion to the increase in its size: much more materials will be required for its manufacture, including finishing materials, and therefore it will cost more, take up more space, become practically two cabinets, which, of course, is unprofitable for the consumer. There is a second way - to make the cabinet more capacious, without increasing its size, that is, to increase the capacity utilization factor. For a long time, the internal design of the cabinets was very inefficient. On the example with piles it is clear that, having placed them along the shelf of the buffet with a large margin of height above them, we occupied a significant part of the compartment area and lost even a large part of its volume. With this method of storage, the cabinet will be as full as it is, but in fact it is half empty, therefore, improvement is required.

For modern cabinet furniture is characterized by the use of a diverse range of devices and devices that increase the useful capacity of cabinets. In some modern models of cabinets for dishes built shelves of different widths. In this case, high objects can be placed in front of a narrow shelf, and low objects can be placed on a narrow shelf. Such a technique is convenient, in particular, in bars (compartments or beverage cabinets), where with good equipment the volume of the compartment is rationally engaged in bottles, decanters and glasses. For storage of glasses there is a special type of shelf - in the form of a comb, into the slits of which the legs of the glasses are inserted. Glasses while hanging in an overturned position.

Significantly increases the utilization rate of the cabinet mounted devices, located on the inner surfaces of the doors. So, in wardrobes, in addition to the long-known tie holders, they use shelves, trays for trifles, trouser bars; in kitchen furniture - stands for bottles, etc. Small hooks on the door, which can be hung, not laid in a drawer or on a shelf, are small, sieves, etc., are not superfluous. In good kitchen furniture, do not use sliding doors because their inner surface cannot be used.

In some cases it is useful to increase the size of one compartment of the cabinet, without changing the device and without increasing the size of the product. For example, the lower drawer of the dresser is deeper than the others. In it it is possible to stack large voluminous things. Designers in vain abandoned this technique, of course, increasing the capacity of the chest, the more so that the chests remained in the range and enjoy steady demand.

An example of a successful product solution with an enlarged compartment are the household cabinets of some kitchen sets. In these cabinets, an additional vertical wall forms a compartment without shelves for the entire height of the cabinet or for a considerable part of it. This forms a container for storing the hose and pipe of a vacuum cleaner, a floor brush, an ironing board, long items that are found in almost every home, but which, as a rule, cannot be stored.

Storage products occupy quite a lot of space in the dwelling, so designers try to find solutions for cabinets that would free up the maximum living space but would not impair the two previous qualities we considered - the appropriateness of dimensions and capacity.

So there is a condition for compact storage. The architecture of modern furniture contains a number of fundamentally new solutions for cabinets, ensuring their greater compactness compared to the traditional range of cabinets. These solutions can be divided into two groups.

Fig. 1. A set of furniture for the general room "Shodnya-2" (KB MMSK-1)

The first group includes solutions that increase the amount of capacitance per unit of floor space occupied by the cabinet. In this case, the cabinet is increased in height, which, in combination with the above methods of increasing capacity, makes it more compact. There are various design solutions for elevated cabinets - mezzanine sections on cabinets of the usual type, shelving, multi-tier sectional and universal prefabricated cabinets.

The second group of solutions for compactness includes the methods of economical placement of cabinets in the room. It has been established that any stand-alone wardrobe takes more floor space in a room than is hidden by its base, since there are practically no crannies on the sides of the closet. Sometimes they are occupied with chairs, less often they manage to lean against another product, they are not used at all when people move around the room. Even when trying to make old-style wardrobes close between them, the gap created by the protruding architectural details disappears. Therefore, in the modern assortment there appeared cabinets with flat, without protrusions, sidewalls, closely adjacent to each other when installing cabinets alongside. In the composite solution of such facades. cabinets take into account their possible blocking, so that there are no awkward combinations. Thus, it is possible to transform a series of products as if into one, minimizing the loss of space for each product, freeing the other room walls.

Compactness can be considered not only as a physical property of cabinets. The impression created by the size of things in the room is also important. And according to the feeling, the furniture should not suppress a person in the room of a modern economical apartment. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if there are wardrobes throughout the room or they are assembled in one block to one wall. And in the near future, the partition cabinets will be used, replacing both the furniture and the building's fencing room. It is not difficult to imagine how the feeling of spaciousness in the rooms of the apartment will increase, if only the table, chairs, beds, armchairs will be placed on the floor, not cluttered with cabinets.

Convenience store. Each thing should have its place, it should be clear where to put it. We have a lot of things in everyday life: large and small, high and low, breakable and unbreakable, bending and tough, piled up and requiring a separate place, being in daily use and retrieved once a season, finally, cheap and expensive. There are things that should not fall into the hands of children, things that require conservation, for example, from moths.

Simplification of design, improvement of manufacturability, cost reduction, saving of materials and other useful measures, taken to the extreme in many cases, made mass-storage cabinets often unacceptable for normal operation.

The modern architecture of the cabinets provides for a wide range of devices and ways to store things. It is quite clear that the capacity and convenience of storage, as well as other features of cabinets, are interconnected. Together, they define the consumer qualities of the cabinet.

The increase in the size of the department compared to the usual, made it possible to place in the closet in addition and conveniently large items. Not smaller effect is reduction of the sizes of offices of boxes for storage of tableware. Usually for knives, forks, spoons, can keys, spatulas and other items, a total capacity is allocated. Items shuffled, spoiling each other. If you make a box with partitions, small compartments of a certain purpose are formed, storage will become convenient.

It is especially important to ensure the convenience of storing items in kitchen cabinets. Many different things should be placed without disturbing each other, in a small area.

Fig. 2. Interior view of a modern wardrobe for clothes (VKTIM)

Storage products should provide easy access to things. From this point of view, the external drawers are more convenient than the drawers behind the door. Shelves located frequently are more convenient than rarely located ones, since it is easier to get the lower object from a small stack. This applies to linen, books and magazines that are stored, usually stacked. A low-mounted drawer compartment is more convenient than a fixed one. For kitchen cabinets, swing doors are more convenient than sliding doors, since sliding doors allow you to open not the whole opening, but less than half. Taking into account the convenience of access to things, the height of the bookshelves is assigned with a margin of 30-40 mm above the book for the movement of the fingers.

In the modern theory of design developed a special question about the zones and ease of use of cabinets. A person is not indifferent at what height the container is located and what objects lie at what height.

The most convenient zone is located at a height of from 720-780 mm (table height) to 1,800 mm. When using containers, there is almost no need to change the position of the case, they are easily overlooked and are within the radius of action of the arm. It is recommended to store the most frequently used items, such as dishes. To appreciate the importance of the newness of this recommendation, let us recall the traditional buffet in which the most convenient for storage area is occupied by a niche for decorative purposes; Of course, this solution composition is unprofitable. It is not by chance that buffets are almost universally obsolete; they are replaced by cabinets of another composition with niches located in other zones.

The second most convenient zone is the lower one, from the floor to the height of the table the third is above 1800 mm.

The concept of areas of use has a very practical value. The less convenient the zone, the less often it is used. Knowing this, the designer accordingly solves the internal structure of the containers in different zones. For example, the third zone, the least convenient, should be equipped for storing seasonal items that are rarely used. Among them, large things predominate, so it makes no sense to use any devices for trifles in the tanks of this zone.

The middle zone is most convenient for placing a refrigerator. All its shelves retractable do irrational, so when using the refrigerator, standing on the floor, there are many inconveniences. It is not by chance that kitchens with special refrigerators built into the middle zone of the equipment are increasingly appearing.

Hygienic cabinets. This quality is associated with their architectural decision. Cabinets for clean clothes should protect the contents from dust. Cabinets for dishes, products, bedding need to be ventilated. Expanding the range of materials used in the production of furniture, has set another task — its correct application. If the material has a specific smell, it should be used for the manufacture of containers, where the smell can be neglected, or look for methods of coatings that protect against odor. From the hygienic point of view, sliding doors in kitchen cabinets are not recommended, since dirt accumulates in the guide grooves, which is difficult to clean.

The functional quality of storage is significantly affected by fittings, its design and location.

Handles-brackets of different types are widely used in the modern assortment. Brackets - the main type of modern handle. When installing them you need to solve the issue of orientation. The horizontal arrangement of brackets, traditional and natural for freely hanging brackets in antique furniture, is repeated today for non-hinged brackets. Such an arrangement is convenient when using sliding, sliding and folding devices. It is less convenient, therefore, less correct is the horizontal arrangement of brackets on the swing doors, since the fingers put inside the bracket begin to take an uncomfortable position when opening.

On the doors of the lower zone, the handles should be positioned higher so that they are easier to reach. Even more important is the relative position of the handle and the latch. It often turns out that the handle and the latch are located in different corners of the door. When using the door in such cases, distortions constantly occur, insignificant, but still affecting the hinge fixing strength. When opening, the door at first gives in and only then the effort of the hand is sufficient for the door to go off the latch. The best position of the handle and the latch is combined, in which the force of the hand is transmitted directly to the latch, and the elasticity of the door shield is not subjected to unnecessary testing. Functional

the quality of storage products are perceived by a person through things to be stored. The person himself is not in direct contact with the product.

Another is the second group of products of furniture — products-supports. They serve man in direct connection with his body. On these products we eat, sit, lie, write, arrange objects for some action; we use products of this group at the movements demanding a support. These functions in our assortment of furniture carry tables, chairs, beds, step-ladders.

Естественно, что основой работы над совершенствованием функциональных качеств изделий-опор являются данные науки о размерах человеческого тела — антропометрии, а также знание особенностей сложения и свойств человеческого тела.

Сейчас проектировщик мебели уже не по традиции назначает размеры стульев, кресел. В нашем распоряжении сегодня находятся рекомендации ученых, изучающих размеры и сложение человеческого тела. Среди крупных специалистов в этой области следует упомянуть шведского врача Б. Акерблома, первым обратившего внимание на недостатки мебели для сидения. В содпу жестве с архитектором Г. Эклефом он разработал принципиаль но новый профиль сидений и спинок (рис. 2), получивший в литературе название «линия Акерблома». Антропологи и гигиенисты сделали большой вклад для обеспечения более точных параметров изделий-опор. Но сделано в этой области далеко не все «Линия Акерблома» не универсальна, некоторые размеры изделий, даже предусмотренные нормами проектирования, до сих пор встречают возражения, например, новая высота рабочей плоскости стола и длина матраца. Такие размеры должны стать бесспорными, а это возможно лишь в результате специальной исследовательской работы и экспериментов.

Fig. 2. Кресло для отдыха, спроек-тированное с использованием «линии Акерблома» (ВПКТИМ)

В настоящее время проектировщики мебели коснулись одного, ранее не изучавшегося вопроса — о взаимосвязи размеров различных изделий-опор. При эксплуатации мебели часты и характерны случаи, когда в одно и то же время, в одном бытовом процессе человек использует не один предмет мебели, а два. Так, рабочее место — не только плоскость стола, но и стул или кресло в дополнение к столу; прикроватная тумбочка целесообразна только в паре с кроватью; тумба для белья требуется к дивану-кровати, а банкетка — к туалетному столу и т. д. Нетрудно сделать вывод, что функционально связанные между собой изделия должны быть увязаны по размерам. Раньше этой взаимосвязи не уделяли должного внимания. Много лег выпускали письменные столы высотой 780 мм и даже 800 мм. При работе за таким столом на стуле высотой даже 460 мм оказывалось, что локти нужно поднимать в неудобное высокое положение, а материал, лежащий на столе, виден под очень острым углом зрения, что тоже неудобно и вредно.

Опыт проектирования и экспериментальные работы в этой области позволили выработать рекомендации по соотношению высот обеденного стола и стула. Удобно, если крышка стола возвышается над поверхностью сиденья на 280—290 мм. Это связано с соотношением размеров тела — расстоянием от локтей до нижней точки туловища сидящего человека. Значит, если стулья выпускаются с высотой сиденья 440 мм, то к ним удобен стол высотой 720—730 мм.

Финская промышленность, например, выпускает столы преимущественно высотой 730 мм, несмотря на то, что финны очень высокие люди. Интересно, что в XIX веке высокими делали кабинетные, парадные столы (вероятно, для представительности), а в крестьянском быту применялись столы низкие.

The development of technology has enriched our life with television, a new pair of products, supports - a TV stand in combination with furniture for the seat. How tall should a television stand?

In the development of furniture over the past 20-30 years, there have been very big changes in the direction of increasing comfort. Our ideas about how to solve the problem of comfort furniture have grown immeasurably compared with the nineteenth century. Nowadays, the principle that was considered indisputable - “the softer, the more comfortable” does not prevail. The classic carpentry design of chairs and chairs with a spring set did not allow to simulate the surface of the seat and back, adjusting their curvature to the shape of the body, therefore, the comfort of the shape was replaced by the softness of the design. So, in a comfortable Voltaire-type armchair, a person seemed to be buried, surrounded on all sides by soft elements of the armchair. But what had to be done for the old sick Voltaire, the great French writer and philosopher, could not become the norm for all. Chairs, chairs, sofas XVIII — XIX centuries, most often uncomfortable. Experts note this lack even in the famous Russian Empire style furniture.

The turning point came in the 30-40s of the 20th century. This period includes the development of the production of bent-glued parts, new elastic materials and molded blocks.

The modern theoretical base of design has armed designers with new, more advanced ideas about the essence of the problem of comfort. By 1948, the appearance of the first works of B. Akerblom, which drew attention to the issue of furniture convenience, dates back. The period of revision of the range and prevailing ideas about the parameters of furniture for sitting, relaxing and sleeping began.

The theory of creating comfortable seats is based on the concept of specific pressure, i.e., body weight per unit area of ​​the base. Simply put, the larger the area of ​​support, the more comfortable it is to sit, since the body weight is distributed over a larger area, and the response pressure of support on the body is felt as the least. The most vivid embodiment of this principle are vision-impressions, repeating the configuration of the body. Such seats are used in agricultural machines, but for household swans, they are not ideal, as when changing posture, the seated ones become uncomfortable

The modern range of chairs and armchairs contains a large number of models with high levels of comfort. These models mark a completely new stage in furniture architecture. Their form is born not only under the influence of decorative methods, fashion, but also meets the requirements of the consumer of furniture. At the same time, not quite comfortable chair models with a round pressed seat are produced. The curvature of the tsargs leads to the fact that the actual depth of the seat under the feet, at the edges, is much less than necessary. This depth is kept only in diameter - the seat axis, in an area that almost does not work as a supporting surface for the thighs. The pressed depression in the seat is the second mistake of this model, since neither the shape nor the location of the depression corresponds to the peculiarities of the human body.

Equally uncomfortable chairs with convex seats, which are designed on springs "snake". In the design of these chairs, the inconsistency of body shape is even more dramatic. This leads to a reduction in the actual support area and overload in certain parts of the body.

In the process of studying the issues of comfortable furniture, many observations have been made. For example, it is noted that the lower the seat is, the deeper it should be, or the smaller the depth of the seat, the higher it should be located (of course, within reasonable limits, with variations in the depth of the seat from 530 to 600 mm). The depth of the seat and the height of the front edge above the floor of the lounge chair should be 880 mm in total:

It is noticed that the human musculature is very sensitive to the slightest fluctuations in the size of supports. At one time, many argued about the height of the table, insisting on lowering the cover by 20–30 mm. It would seem a small size, only the thickness of the plate. If you put a piece of a plate under a working or dining chair and thereby simulate a decrease in the height of the table, you can feel how comfortable the hands are on the table. Therefore, in modern design of chairs, armchairs, sofas, all sizes are carefully worked out in millimeters.

An important quality of products-supports is their hygiene, quality, which most recently were treated without special attention. Currently in the manufacture of furniture using new materials with unfamiliar performance properties, such as foam rubber. Still not fully understood its properties. Furniture designers have not yet come to a common opinion on its use, since in some cases its use is contraindicated (in children's mattresses).

The behavior of new materials with respect to moisture requires special attention, since models have appeared that represent a closed, “hugging” human structure. In such models, the return of moisture and body heat to the air decreases and to the support material increases. Probably, the feeling of a stuffy, hot chair, and sometimes a chair, is familiar to many. Of course, the functional qualities in these cases are worse than desired.

In addition to the functional qualities of furniture considered by us, there are qualities associated not with the purpose, but with the constructive design of the models.

In both main groups of furniture products there are a large number of transformable products, which, when used, have to change the arrangement of the elements of the product. It is clear that the transformation should be easy, affordable efforts of one person, reliable and durable. This amount of qualities makes a sofa bed, a sliding table, a folding chair, folding devices built-in furniture.

Disassembly of furniture products has become a frequent method of constructive decision. Modern furniture has become more technological, more transportable, but has a lack of structural rigidity. Now designers are working to improve the quality of collapsible joints.