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Furniture That Makes You Dance


The furniture design project for the community centre in Rio, Brazil was led by Studio-X Rio in 2014. This project had created a series of furnitures for the community centre named Casa do Jongo (Jongo House) run by Jongo da Sarrinha, a local voluntary organisation working for community development in Madureira - in the northern suburbs of Rio. They encourage local residents' better way of living through their traditional African dance “Jongo”.

Daisuke took part of one of design collectives to create a set of furnitures for the main hall where the local community use for multi-purpose such as eating, events, school and meetings. They are willing people to play Jongo dance after anything they do in the hall as it can be a way to strengthen the bond of community.  And they wanted to use cost-effective materials from the viewpoint of running costs. Then we decided to use ordinary plastic bucket as a base of furniture, and as a drum - we found that the bucket actually makes vibrant sound. The set of furniture consists of a series of small parts functioning by putting them on the top of the buckets, to use them as chairs, tables, and as drums for dancing. 

This spatial intervention named Furniture That Makes You Dance focuses more on the performative experience of people dancing with other community members in the hall rather than just making a functional furniture. It reflects his background of performance art and imaginable’s approach to story that realise new experience into our new code of conduct.

The set of furnitures consists of plastic buckets, wooden chair pads, small table-tops and a big serving table that can store everything in it






Storyboard showing the entire experience with the furniture in the mail hall


Visitors playing plastic buckets as drums in the exhibition




The current community centre 'Casa do Jongo'


Learning how to play the drum from local kids


Locals playing Jongo


Process of making prototype furniture by CNC


Testing if a table-top works well with a bucket


Painting chair pads by colourful kite papers from local market


The project is featured by design magazine in Brazil


The furniture is also invited to the furniture exhibition