You might remember these sewing baskets we looked at a while ago:

Tatsuya Sakurai, a Product Design student at Japan's Tama Art University, has designed a piece of storage furniture that reminds me of those baskets a bit. I do, however, prefer Sakurai's work:

Writes Sakurai:

"The biggest feature of this furniture is that all the storage parts of each stage can be expanded by one operation of lifting the top stage, and by making the shape of the sliding rail broken from a straight line. We devised a lock so that it would not return to its original state from the unfolded state. As furniture that can be used to store and decorate your own collection, it is supposed to be used in two ways as storage on the sofa side of the living room."

It was also fun to read the crit of the project, from Tama design professor Tatsu Ogata. It's machine-translated, but I think I get the gist:

"Comments from the instructor:

"Furniture that can be changed easily by one movement.

"Tatsuya Sakurai's proposal hides a great deal of hardship. When designing the mechanism and operating parts, it is necessary to solve many problems that cannot be seen without actually repeating verification such as clearance and shape maintenance after deformation. If you lean toward the mechanism, it will affect the usability, and if you try to miniaturize it, there will be a problem with the material strength, but since he stuck to the simple appearance of a wooden box until the end, it is between furniture and tools. The newness like this is appearing.

"It is difficult to feel the magnitude of the change in the height after deformation from the photographs and illustrations alone, but in reality, it is a work that is honestly surprising when you see how it expands in the height direction as well as in the front and back direction with smooth operation.

"Verification while going back and forth between structure and design presumably led to great learning for Sakurai-kun. I hope you will continue to be confident in this process."

If I ever participate in another design crit, I am definitely going to work in the phrase "The newness like this is appearing."