Students Showcase Functional Art at Record-Breaking Vellum Furniture Competition
In early November, students from the College of Architecture and Environmental Design flexed their fabrication skills during the record-setting 22nd annual Vellum Furniture Competition. The largest in university history, this year’s competition featured a jaw-dropping 262 entries, including tables, chairs, light fixtures, toys and other experimental design solutions.
Vellum challenges students to dream up an original piece of furniture, source materials and build it. During a public exhibition of the pieces, a panel of judges, including faculty, architects, furniture designers and artists, evaluate each entry on functionality, individuality and beauty.
“Vellum provides a true-life test case employing real budgets, real materials, real engagement with suppliers, fabricators and manufacturers plus real design timelines and construction schedules not typically incorporated into academic enterprise,” said co-organizer Tom di Santo, a professor in Cal Poly’s Architecture Department. “It is amazing to see so many brilliant examples of Learn by Doing that the students achieve in such a short period of time.”
For weeks before the final competition, students honed their designs and fabricated components in the CAED Support Shop on campus. The challenge helped Mustangs build skills welding, cutting wood and upholstering. Some students even cast metal in custom molds to bring their ideas to life.
The San Luis Obispo firm Vellum Design Build and the College of Architecture and Environmental Design partnered to host the competition, which regularly features eye-catching items that push the envelope.
“The beauty of the Vellum Competition is that roughly half the entries have a critical take, pushing the agenda of the students’ design discourse,” said di Santo. “The other half of the entries are simply beautiful works of functional art.”
Among this year’s entries was a unique chair from fifth-year architecture student and first-time Vellum participant Grace Schweigert, who won the Space Architects’ Milano Grand Prize: the competition’s highest honor.
Her accent chair and complementary leg rest, titled “Rembrace: Comfort in a Capitalist Context,” contained bean bags stuffed with hand-sewn recycled t-shirts, pants, skirts and blankets dressed in a crocheted cover.
“I chose crochet to create the cover because it is the only stitch that cannot be replicated by technology, as it is too complex,” she said.
Schweigert says her concept addresses misconceptions and stigmas attached to homelessness by reusing items colored by negative bias to find comfort. “Rembrace” combines the words “remnant” and “embrace” to describe how discarded items — often used by those unhoused — hug the user. As someone interacts with the chair, it slowly comforts and embraces them with scrapped parts that illustrate wasteful consumerism and economic inequality.
“We know harm is happening and keep it out of view,” Schweigert said. “If we cannot see the landfill, the workers or the harm, we will carry on and overlook our impact, even when we notice it.”
With the award, Schweigert will receive a trip to Milan, Italy, in April to attend the Salone International del Mobile — the world’s largest trade fair that annually showcases the latest in furniture and design from around the globe.
“Receiving the grand prize was something I honestly didn’t think was in the cards for me,” Schweigert recalled. “I was overjoyed, surprised and confused all at the same time. It’s something I will never forget, and I’m so appreciative of the recognition and the opportunity to go to Milan.”
The competition also handed out eight scholarships, special prizes and an audience choice award. For more information, visit the College of Architecture and Environmental Design website.
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