Our acrylic side tables & acrylic Magazine racks were designed to specifically focus on the material and the function. We spent months experimenting with the transparency, how our acrylic tables reflect rays off the sun, how the light from inside of the room can affect the acrylic, and how different depths can create different shadows and shapes on different surfaces. The main focus of the magazine racks and the side tables was to focus on the raw nature of the acrylic and focus on the transparency, and how we can form, bend & cut the material. If you take the pod side table, for example, you will notice in the top, it has small CNC cut grooves. These grooves are not only for design, but they are for function as well.. The function being that acrylic has quite a soft polished surface, but with the grooves, small scratches are hidden to the eye. If you take our Rising Sun magazine rack. You'll notice we have a green and an orange raw material. When these two colors combine, they create a third color via the shadow on the floor.
We believe this is dependent on a personal person's view. The history of acrylic has been known to be a mass-produced material for such uses as packaging and signage. Although what we at United Strangers have done is create our own acrylic material, formula, granules & sheets. We have created our own product with depth, and then created the form. We believe any material can never go out of style. If you apply these principles.
As mentioned the best acrylic pieces are smaller items, where they can have an impact on the room, ideally in areas such as living rooms and bedrooms for side tables & magazine racks. General hallways could be good and used with artwork applications.
Generally speaking at United Strangers we focus more on using acrylic as a visual piece of art, together with function. We tend to focus on coffee tables, acrylic tv stands, side tables, magazine racks, artwork & decoration pieces. Because the material is quite dominating and quite strong. Our designers felt if we became focused on larger items, they would dominate the room, and that's not what we're trying to do.. We're trying to create smaller items with depth.
Acrylic furniture is made from small granules, these granules are a byproduct of oil mixed with other chemicals. (what chemicals) These granules are then heated and formed into extrusion machines, which either are created into a specific form or a sheet. The form can be a mold which is then used in the process of making furniture.. for example, the sheet material could be formed, folded, cut, welded, and joined together to create anything from scratch such as coffee tables, side tables, magazine racks, occasional chairs, etc. The manufacturing area of acrylic furniture needs to be extremely clean of dust, due to acrylic being a fine polished material taken out of the mold. Normally acrylic sheets come in the size 1.2 meters x 2.4 meters and the thickness of the mesh is in millimeters. The acrylic material can be made into a variety of colors, which is dictated by the small acrylic granules that are in the initial raw material-making process. The formula can be adapted and changed according to different colors and can also be made more transparent, translucent, have a smoky-like feeling, and other effects which can, in turn, provide a certain depth to the material. We at United Strangers, made our own formula and granules, for our unique acrylic collection of furniture. We currently have three different colors and each color is unique to only United strangers.
One of the limitations of acrylic is due to the oil compounds and the granules of how the material is made, which are susceptible to light scratches on its surface. That is why we use a lot darker colors with depth because that tends to hide these surface scratches, you can polish the scratches with a hairdryer etc, although with these concerns in mind, a lot of our furniture is designed, where the surface area is not acrylic, to try and avoid a lot of these scratches.
Yes, the actual acrylic material can be used outdoors. Although the issue lies with the UV content within the granules. Therefore depending on the amount of sun exposure, If there's too much exposure, the colours will change and slowly fade. The colorway of our acrylic items have been designed for use indoors. Although for architects, interior designers & property developers if you are interested, we can recreate a formula that can be used outdoors through a potential request via our contract business solutions.