Main Project Aesthetic – Mid Century Modern Nightstand

For my final project I will create a mid century modern nightstand, the main driving force behind this project is my lack of a nightstand and not wanting to purchase a brand new piece of furniture myself. I plan on creating this piece in the mid century modern aesthetic, this aesthetic is characterized by simplicity, streamlined, and functional designs, it can be applied to entire spaces, buildings or individual pieces. I wouldn’t say I have curated a mid century modern aesthetic to my own space but I think they piece will still fit in my room nicely. Below in Figure 1 were my first sketches surrounding this project, These were done pretty quickly so I didn’t try and make them perfect because I planned to move towards CAD modelling relatively fast after a few sketches. I plan to make this piece entirely out of wood, I haven’t decided on a species but most likely cherry to match my upcycle project.

In the the Featured Image and below in Figure 2 you can see one of the sets of nightstands I used as inspiration from Walker Edison. There are genuinely hundreds of this style of nightstand online as it is quite popular so I can’t really quote one specific piece that I got my full inspiration from, but these pieces are where a decent amount of inspiration came from. One thing I plan to incorporate into my design that I haven’t drawn is either rattan cane webbing, or Japanese Kumiko, both of these would stray a tiny bit away from mid century modern but they would also add a bit of uniqueness to the simple piece.

Because mid century modern is a simplistic minimalist aesthetic the first wildly different or opposite aesthetic I thought of was maximalism, shown below in Figure 3 I drew a wavy, funky, maximalist nightstand concept. This design would be much harder to create than the more simple design I am planning on but it would lead itself to a very unique aesthetic if you had a space that it fit with. To me it gives off 60s-80s vibes, you could pair it with a shag carpet, mustard couch, and funky lamps.

Another aesthetic that is quite different from mid century modern is brutalism, brutalism is characterized by geometric shapes, simple designs to ensure action over superficial motifs, and frequently raw or ‘unfinished’ materials. So to go along with the theme I drew up a rhombus or parallelogram nightstand that would be made of concrete and wouldn’t have any noticeable legs, this drawing is not my best work so imagine that all the horizontal pieces are level with the floor. This piece could fit in a very modern, cold, concrete filled home, which I’m sure applies to someone, but definitely not a place I would want to call home.

Overall I think it was cool to explore the ‘What if?’ of my project and how other aesthetics may fit into my life and home or others, if I had to choose between the two other aesthetics I would definitely choose the first maximalist one, the brutalist just would stand out far to much for any space I would ever live in.

References:

Figure 2: https://walkeredison.com/products/mid-century-solid-wood-nightstand-collection-1-or-2-drawer?bvstate=pg:3/ct:r