2D Design Analysis
The first step in designing the fictional products used in my proposals for new rack configuration is an analysis of what existing places the rack’s dimensions allow it to fit into, and also what existing categories of objects it is capable of most efficiently storing. The studies are split accordingly into two series called “Installation Fit” examining how the rack fits into larger environments, and “Object Fit” examining how objects fit into the rack.
- Color-coding legend for the analysis:
– Blue:19" rack hardware and annotation lines for dimensional clearances of the racks.
– Purple: 23" racks and their dimensional clearances.
– Red: Text/annotations indicating information about external non-rack objects and their dimensional clearances/parameters for test-fitting with the rack.
You can click on the following drawings to view them at an enlarged size.
- Installation Fits
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Kitchen Cabinets. The 19" rack fits far more efficiently into narrower standard sizes of kitchen cabinets compared with wider cabinet sizes. A kitchen designed to accommodate 19" racks would need to have its cabinet modules be artificially narrow in comparison to the sizes a designer would otherwise use to maximize efficiency. Upper cabinet modules (not shown) have the same sizes of widths as the lower cabinets being studied.
The analysis resulted in a rough design sketch outlining some brackets to fit between the rack and the cabinet for installing the racks:
The case of the 24" rack cabinet shows an example of a phenomenon I expect to continue seeing in the future: in situations where the rack fits somewhat awkwardly into an existing physical context, such as in this case where a physical gap occurs between the width of the rack and the cabinet it’s being mounted into, those disjunctions can investigated to see if they offer positive alternative design possibilities. In this case, I drew holes in my rough sketch of the side brackets connecting the rack to the cabinet with the idea that they might serve as openings for cable management (what electronic devices would someone even want to install in a rack under a kitchen cabinet?) in the future.
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Residential Closets
This sketch is fairly basic so far. The closet width dimensions are rough generalizations given how closets in floor plans are often designed to encompass whatever width of available space is convenient to fill in their location.
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More scenarios to come…
- Object Fits
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Dishes
How different standard sizes of dishes would fit into the rack kitchen cabinet systems. -
Paper
Standard sheets of 8.5x11 and 11x17 paper have a very tight fit into the rack. A proposed rackmount paper tray would have borders extending beyond the inner dimensions of the rack posts to allow for easy construction and usability. -
More scenarios to come…
