Contemporary Oil Painting

At Designed & Made, we consider ourselves to be more than cabinet makers. We think of our company as a design studio with advanced manufacturing capabilities. When we are involved in a project early, we can help shape walls and room layouts to enhance the final product for our clients.

This is evident in the office of our new shop. As we walked the space and considered the office layout, we identified an opportunity within the architectural design process for a piece of art on a feature wall that would be created specifically for this size art piece.

While this may seem like a side project piece of art for our office walls to the lay person, it allows us to experiment with CNC machining and finishing techniques at the intersection of art, design, technology and manufacturing. The knowledge we gain during these types of projects provide us new design, manufacturing and finishing techniques that we can use to elevate our client’s homes, businesses and workspaces in the future. When we create cabinets and other features, we are really creating functional art.

The artwork, named Genius Loci, started as an organic hand drawing which was machined with 3D topographical features and finished using a combination of oil paint, gold leaf, silver leaf and platinum leaf. The methods used range from the ancient to the modern.

See how the process played out in the gallery below from framing the wall to making and installing the artwork.

Driftwood-Style Table

Designed & Made was hired by Buhl Investors to produce a custom table for Farwell-on-Water, a new apartment building in St. Paul. The table was designed to mimic driftwood from the Mississippi River which is the setting for the apartment building.

The table was designed and rendered, and then produced in sections and installed on site. Watch the video below for a walk-through, and check out the design, assembly and final installation below.

Home Movie Theater

 

Designed & Made collaborated with Admit One and Annie Tropple to design and build this custom, award-winning home movie theater. Hear from Lance and Annie about how the project came to life.