Almost Instant Furniture

Sensible, practical--and affordable

Furniture is the luggage of living. While beds, chairs, tables and lamps are as essential to civilized society as books or bread, they are expensive, clumsy to carry, costly to move, often drearily designed and woefully apt to disintegrate. The solution? Make your own.

Unweds and newlyweds and suddenly de-weds have traditionally made do with orange crates and teetery constructions of brick and board. Quite recently, many Americans have discovered that they can assemble stylish, comfortable, totable furnishings with paper, cardboard, plywood, Masonite, rough lumber, foam rubber, epoxy glue, a staple gun and unlimited imagination. Moreover, the home Hepplewhite can construct anything from a coffee table to a meditation center that fits his or her own vision, taste and living quarters. Inexpensively. And almost instantly.

The Dr. Doolittle of do-it-yourself is a 35-year-old New Yorker named Spiros Zakas. A highly successful commercial designer and author who recently revamped Chicago's venerable Pump Room, Zakas also teaches at Manhattan's famed Parsons School of Design (wherefrom, nearly 50 years ago, issued the Parsons table). Zakas' book, Furniture in 24 Hours (Macmillan; $10.95), a collection of his own designs and those of his most inventive pupils, has gone through six printings in little over a year. Its 128 pages are a potpourri of practical pieces that range from ad hoc aphrodisiac to pure zany. None of the designs are tacky, crude or dull, though some of the chairs may not be as easy on the derriere as they are on the eye. Each design is accompanied by diagrams, a photograph of the finished object and a meticulous list of the materials and tools needed to assemble it.

The designs range from what Zakas calls "Big Stuff' to "Small Stuff' and encompass just about every kind of furnishing. One project, designed under Zakas' supervision by Parsons Student Stephanie Dieterich, is titled "the Knockdownable Sensuous Topograph"; a cross between a playpen and a bed, it is easily disassembled and can be made for about $40. A less felicitously named objet, a 4 ft. 10 in.--long coffee table designed by Student Greg Peterson, is called "Plumber's Dream"; a bronzed glass top mounted on plastic piping and sundry elbows and joints, it has a kind of Bauhaus elegance mit wit (it costs $30 to make).

Furniture," observes Zakas, "is thought of as a very complicated thing. It really isn't. A chair should have a seat and a back, a table a top and a base. Those are very simple elements to put together to sit on, eat at or store in." This kind of fun, and indeed new departures in design, has been made possible by a marriage of technology and sprightly aesthetics. Explains Zakas: "Probably the biggest single element has been the development of urethane foam. Before foam, you had to have springs, and they are a real hassle." The new supergrip glues have also been a boon to the basement Sheraton: they will hold wood joints together more durably than the most exquisite doweling. Easy-to-handle materials such as Masonite, plywood and Plexiglas have simplified furniture construction. To Zakas, one of the most important technical innovations of all is the staple gun, which can be used for upholstery by tacking the material over foam and onto the frame. The staple gun can also be used for insulating walls; indeed, it is almost possible to build a house with one of these $30 widgets, points out Zakas, who is writing a book on the uses of this successor to the paper clip: it is tentatively titled Staple! Staple!

Also in the works is Furniture in 24 Hours, Volume II. One of the two dozen entries will be a chair that requires no glues or screws and can be finished for less than $10, including back and bottom cushions. Another student-designed project is an updated version of the 1940s gossip bench, also glueless and screwless, that can be made for $6. Still, to Spiros Zakas, making furniture is not so much a matter of price as of pride--of "putting yourself in your home." If he keeps at it. Author-Editor Zakas may even put Designer Zakas out of business.

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