Smith Door Knob
Design
Medium
Dimension
Date
Door Knob
Padauk, Blood Wood, Brass
L17” x W4” x D2.5”
Spring 2024
Category
Code
Object Design
NE06
Smith Door Knob is a door knob designed for the Frank Lloyd Wright Smith House in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA. It draws from the formal and color language of the house, reinterpreting its themes of linearity and horizontality into the design of a functional object. When resting flat, Smith Door Knob echoes the architectural horizontality of its source. Yet in its transformation into a door knob, that horizontality is subtly shifted into verticality—bridging architecture and object through orientation and form.
The bench's top is finished with ash veneer, enhancing the materiality of the bent plywood, which maximizes its visual and physical minimalism. The absence of a central leg, made possible by the flexibility of the plywood, contributes to a clean, continuous form. The legs are composed of eight layers of bent plywood, jointed with a central plywood board and supported by a metal stretcher for added weight-bearing capacity. The differentiated orientation of the veneer grain, with straight grain on top and cross-grain on the bottom, further emphasizes its origami-inspired quality, making Crease Bench both functional and visually engaging in any space.