ASSEMBLIES
ASSEMBLIES
Joinery is beautiful on its own, but when it
serves a purpose and is intelligently aggrega-
ted, joinery brings order to the larger object.
AtFAB’s offerings evolved from a single piece of
furniture into several distinctly different pieces,
and we faced an array of questions in the
design process: How should a leg meet the
ground or connect with a tabletop? How should
we turn a corner or terminate an edge? How
should we incorporate a shelf or introduce an
arm into a chair design?
There were infinite options for combining the
sniglet into joinery, and we could have easily
invented a new design solution to solve each
discrete connection challenge that arose. This
would have been a complicated process, and it
ultimately would have produced a set of equally
complicated, and unrelated, furniture designs.
Instead, we decided to work with an overall
framework that would guide our design deci-
sions with greater consistency.
This framework began as the basic S/Z joint
and then grew into several distinct joinery
assemblies.
S/Z JOINT
In isolation, a sniglet may seem like nothing
more than a clever detail, but it underpins a
complex system of furniture. Combine a sniglet
and tab into a single toolpath, and you have a
basic joinery element. Cutting two flat parts
with this toolpath yields components that inter-
lock to form a strong orthogonal, or right angle,
connection. By multiplying, rotating, mirroring,
or aggregating this basic joinery toolpath, you
can combine flat parts into volumetric corners,
structural frames, continuous surfaces, and
more.
AtFAB uses a version of this fundamental join-
ery element by incorporating a sniglet and a
tab, or lazy finger. When selectively combined,
multiple S/Z joints form a finite number of
basic joinery connections, which are in turn
aggregated into larger assemblies that shape
an entire line of furniture.
FIGURE 2-24
The AtFAB S/Z joint
interlocks two identical
tabs (left) and is the
basis for the tab, cor-
ner, foot and hanger
assemblies
02/END MILL TO FURNITURE COLLECTION
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