how excited we were with those reduced roses. such a bargain 9 pounds down to 45p

Day five morning, we went to borrow chairs and helped in building the hangers wall in the afternoon. A homey office is nearly done!

everything is starting to take shape in the office. all we need is more decorations to make it feel more like an office

Helping out the hangers team, they have finished the two partitions quickly and nicely.

With the green wall all finished, here is my favourite bottle plant ! The next step is to experiment with all sorts of different flowers and plants.

Day 5. Helping out the hangers team to finish off the partitions and decorating the office space.

The Borrowers Woz ere 2k15

Today we finished binding all the books. Using them we created two coffee tables, two workspace tables and one large meeting area table. In total we used around 450 books !

First attempt at sanding the wooden pallets down.. Six splinters already, and five palettes left!

Wheelbarrow chairs in use in the kitchen area.

A metal frame was used to support the hanger partition, this was created in the metal workshop at MMU. Hangers were then dropped onto the frame to create an interlocking pattern across the six poles.

Using coffee cups to create a bar graph showing office workers coffee consumption.

Experimenting with wall partitions in different locations.

The second stage of construction of the green wall was to arrange the bottles and plant flowers in the bottles .

The first stages of making the recycled green wall were collecting and cutting the 1 liter bottles and measuring out where to drill the holes in the wall.

Kitchen space in the making// green wall // small table // wheelbarrow chairs

"Borrowing" materials to make tables of different heights easily. Desks//Coffee tables

a see-through partition with book shelves.. and more functions of course! ;)

Attaching hinges to the ladders

Throwback to.. while at workshop!

mark was angry with this, as you can see, the dimensions aren't exactly right. but i think that we should always make the best of what we have. I think it looks great. and the different levels makes the whole thing that extra bit interesting.

we used the chairs to make shelves, and now we have no chairs to put in the room. ironic, ha?
we might have to borrow some chairs, so if you have some, let us know. kinda fits in with the whole "borrowers" theme. I like that.

probably my favourite thing in the room. i love plants and i hate plastic bottles. yes, one more thing that is actually recycled.
I do love it, shame that i cant drill in my room.

my first thoughts were, "nothing is really recycled in this room". but then comes ghada, and now we have a chair/desk asda cart. pretty creative i'd say. and very much recycled. not sure if comfortable, but definitely innovative.

a more technical approach to the making of the base. definitely more sound and more stable. the cad file is currently in the metal workshop. as we await the manufacture of the base. I have hope for this one, maybe the 5th attempt won't be a fail after all.

another shape, perhaps more stable. we never got to found out. the base is still too ugly, and colours are too bright for my taste. but still interesting.

5 colours. 2000 hangers and 2 partitions.
second attempt at making the partition stable. a failed attempt

more comfortable than it actually looks. way more comfortable

For day four, we had a morning of sanding the rough surfaces of the wood tables. There were newly 'borrowed' wood pieces giving the ladder shelf a new look with a better function.

The Borrowers session plan. Everything seems to be in the right track!

A close up of the recycled 2L bottle plant pots that add a splash of color to the creative office space.

A matte black blackboard paint is being painted onto the partitions so we can write on it. We taped around the corners to create a frame like shape on it and to ensure a neat finish.

Day 4. Painting the wooden partitions in matte black so that it can be used as a blackboard.

Metal workshop// Steel poles// measured and cut, ready for welding

DAY FOUR// Metal base for the hanger screen is being constructed in the Metal Workshop.The metal will create stability and hopefully hold the structure upright. Created in response to our previous attempt which fell over.

The metal bars, cut and ready to weld from the Metal Workshop

SOIL AND PLASTIC// NATURAL AND MAN-MADE

GREEN WALL, made from recycled 2l bottles with "borrowed" plants

In The Borrowers toolkit

FOREGROUND// New hanger screen// Double curved for extra balance
BACKGROUND// Previous hanger screen lying in it's grave

After the collapse, we tried to create a more stable structure // widening the surface area and increase the amount of poles

HANGERS VS GRAVITY

From the morning of DAY 2// TRIAL 2// image taken previous to it's collapse

TEAMWORK// Sanding wood// Drilling the green wall// Constructing the hanger wall

The Borrowers HQ - a room borrowed from the St James Building - Grade II listed building in Oxford Street, Manchester, England, completed in 1912.

Testing different objects such as shopping trolleys and wheelbarrows as chairs.

Another trip around Manchester (by car this time) "borrowing" as many Argos and Wickes catalogues as we can.

Walking around town grabbing as many catalogues as we can get our hands on to start building our tables.

Planning out which way to position, stack and bind the wickes books to create the table legs.

Coffee table for the Borrowers. Wood. Drills. Tape.

Day 3 is another workshop day, we had become more familiar with the steps in making ladders now and it just took us about 2.5 hours to finish two ladders. The 4 ladders look good when they stand together! The workshop experience in making this ladder shelf is really interesting but the most unforgettable part should be carrying the ladders from the workshop to St.James's Building. Honestly, the ladders are pretty heavy...

Day 3. Finish the rest of the partitions today and they work perfectly.

Day3: It's beginning to look like a proper office environment

Milk crate sofa - crates "Borrowed" from Creamfield Dairies

The partitions are joint together with door hinges and they stand up nicely.

Adapting the design with the materials available to us. We made the U channel out of timber instead of steel.

On the first day we're just planning on the structure, dimensions etc. of the ladders. Ordered materials from the workshop. Second day, real work began! Marking, drilling holes, screwing and unscrewing and screwing again.. & chatting! I'm impressed by how productive we are... haha :P Two ladders in like 3 hours..? Thank you, everyone!! Looking forward to more great time working (and chilling) together! x

Day 2. Had a productive day working in the workshop and we are half way through.

Day 1. Planned how to construct the partitions and sourced materials. Due to some minor problems, we changed the original design a little bit.

Spending the first day calculating the dimension of the ladder shelf and making two ladders on day 2. Having great fun with Andrei, Amber and Mimi in the workshop. Many problems existed while making these ladders but we are really happy with the output.

Nicholas and Derek in the making of wooden partitions. Very impress with them working efficiently and effectively. Keep up the good work!

Andrei, Amber and Jessie worked on two wooden ladders today. They are ladder experts now, hehe, all thanks to staffs at MMU workshop that were being so helpful in the process. Two more ladders to go tomorrow. Go team!

It's good to see that students are being very productive today. There is no such thing as one furniture is easier to build than the other, and every team has issues to solve. We have students working on making tables and hangers partition at St James' Building and students making wooden ladders & movable wooden partition at MMU workshop. Everything goes very well as planned, in fact better, with design ideas from 1st and 2nd year students.

Day 1, discussed the base of the 'hanger wall', timber blocks were made as the base of the structure for the first test.

Day 2, tested different layouts of the hangers. 2

Day 2, tested different layouts of the hangers. 1

Day 2, first test of the 'hanger wall'.

Our first attempt at stacking hangers to form a screen.

#deathbydesign. The remnants of our beautiful screen after issues with an unstable base. Hangers vs gravity

Believe it or not, wheelbarrow chair can be quite comfortable. We'll put one or two at our school's end-of-year exhibition, so everyone can try sitting in it.

First day of event went very well. 1st and 2nd year students were divided into groups to fulfill the task of building furniture with re-purpose items. Drawings for each furniture have been provided to guide the process, however students are allowed to make changes to the design, construction method or the materials, in order to encourage creativity in them.

We had real fun on Sunday at Ikea. Four trolleys full with thousands of hangers. Mark's blue car is certainly a tardis!