Material Innovations

Hi, I am David Boekelheide from Portland Oregon.   In a sense, I was building furniture before I was born:  my mother cut dovetails at a night furniture class while pregnant with me.  She and my father met and received their graduate degrees at University of Oregon where my grandfather headed the chemistry department for thirty years.  As a kid I spent much of my childhood building forts in the dense evergreens along the Tualatin river.  I’m now 34 and find myself revisiting personalized hand built environments.

Growing up in Oregon provided me with a support group of family, peers and teachers committed to social and environmental consciousness.  In Portland, I was fortunate enough to attend The Catlin Gabel School, where we were introduced to thinkers from Henry David Thoreau to Edward Abbey to Buckminster Fuller.  Every year each class would participate in environmental restoration projects.  We spent days on Mt. Hood thinning too-closely replanted fir trees, stripping their bark and branches to build buck and rail fence to exclude range cattle from fragile streambeds.  Designing, organizing and planning to improveenvironment and community is a part of my life.

Studying furniture and metalsmithing at The Oregon College of Art and Craft indulged my desire to create.  I was introduced to fine art, and the conceptual language of art furniture, and the dynamic tension between form and function.  Graduating with a B.F.A. in wood and metal, I spent the following eight years building within Portland’s design community creating work ranging from two story mobile meeting rooms to art deco inspired cast bronze handles.

Building on an industrial scale has made me acutely aware of the time, energy and material that can be lost as a result of inefficient design.  The objects and built environments we occupy are too often a result of a disconnected design process.  Architects shape our cities and towns, but the citizens often have very little input throughout the process.  The United States were formed by self sufficient pioneers striving for independence.  Currently we exist in a capitalistic consumer driven culture where so many decisions are made for us, with out our knowledge.  Too much of the production and industry that sustained us has moved outside our borders.  As a country we are realizing we need to regain a mode of self reliance.

This realization is exciting, it is a chance to reconnect with the shape of our surroundings.  People are hungry for ways to cut out the corporate middle man.  Hope lies within our strong D.Y.I. movement and the resurgence of craft in the art world.  Value is now placed on local production and distribution creating a market for Community Supported Agriculture.  We are learning the importance of holistic design that considers the life cycle of the materials and products we consume.  A sense of belonging, and cultural identity develops when we become a part of local self sustaining systems.

The movement towards local, sustainable methods of production will soon change the way we build our environments.  I want to close the gap between design and building in my community.  A small design/build company can respond directly to the needs of their clients.  Projects built through a design firm, architecture firm, engineering firm then to a construction company have so many chances for the initial vision to be lost.  It is my goal to create personalized environments, interiors and objects specific to individuals needs.