Toyo Ito Dog Bed

Here is a project I worked on with Christina Sicoli.  We designed a dog bed based on the the work of contemporary architect Toyo Ito.

One thing that this project taught me was the importance of planning.  We spent a ton of time drawing out ideas and possible designs. It was great working with another person, it forced us to communicate our ideas well and make sure we were on the same page for each decision.  As you can see below, we had a lot of decisions to make!

Here are some of our many sketches:

The idea was to create an architectural form that emerged out of the ground, much like Toyo Ito’s design for Grin Grin Park in Japan.  These are some views of our sketch models:

We ended up using blue foam to shape the form, and covered it in fiber glass.  It was so much fun!  It was a crazy learning curve as neither of us had used fiber glasses before.

Below is a video of our process.  If you look closely you can see my hands in some of the shots. ;)  I have to give a huge amount of credit to Christina for this, she edited the whole thing and did a really good job.

 Here are some more images of the completed bed, click on them to enlarge:

We ended up selling the bed at auction during ‘Pets in the Park,’ a fundraiser for the Edmonton Humane Society.  Glad to see it going to a good cause, I hope the owner is happy with it!