Life Lessons and Learning Skills Along the Way
The Formative Years
What started innocently enough in an 8th grade wood shop class ultimately turned into a career as a woodworker, custom furniture designer, restorer, and furniture design professor. Having grown up playing with Lego, drawing in my sketchbooks frequently and making model cars, it was evident that I needed a physical creative outlet to stay satisfied. My parents didn’t quite know what to do with me. They were both very focused in mathematics being a high school math teacher and a college statistics professor.
That initial 8th grade shop class with Norm Smith, which my parents encouraged me to take, introduced me to woodworking, drafting and a touch of artistic activities. Our first physical project was to build a simple step stool out of pine shelf boards from the local hardwood store. Being able to turn an idea, a sketch, a measured drawing into a tangible item was exciting to me and set me on my path. I knew I was happiest when I could use my creative skills AND my physical skills.
As college major selections loomed in high school, my parents were still at a loss for what to do with this kid. He likes to draw.. he likes to make things… and doesn’t want an office job. Fortunately my mom found a career book in the school library. While thumbing through it we found Industrial Design which blends the artistic and engineering skills to create products. Side note: it was also the lowest paying career listed in the book.. yeah!
The College Years
I was accepted into the Georgia Tech Industrial Design program where we spent countless sleepless nights designing, drawing, making models and bonding with our classmates. It was 4 years of sleep deprivation.. and fun.. lots of fun! Trent Chima, the shop instructor, was a constant source of laughter and lessons along the way.
The Center for Rehabilitation Technology Years
Just before graduation I was hired at the Center for Rehabilitation of Technology (now the Center for Inclusive Design and Innovation) at Georgia Tech because of my ability to build models and molds for vacuum forming. The next 13 years were filled with designing and building custom furniture, devices, and gizmos for people with physical disabilities. It was a very rewarding job helping others return to work, and continually being challenged from a design standpoint. This job really anchored my desire to do custom work as each project was unique from the last which kept things exciting and different.
The Advanced Wood Product Lab Years
In 2001 I shifted to a new research center at GT that would again help guide my future and focus my skills even more so into furniture design. Set in a 13,000 square foot facility just off campus, the Advanced Wood Products Lab (AWPL) , now known as the Digital Fabrication Lab, was filled with production quality woodworking machines… I was in heaven!
During the early years at AWPL I was encouraged to get my Masters Degree in Industrial Design at Georgia Tech by my mentors. Believing I was “too old” to bother, feeling that it would take too long, my mentor Lorraine Justice gave me a great piece of life advice. “It’ll take you 2 years to get your degree. In 2 years you’ll be 2 years older… with or without the degree.” I signed up right away. The project for the Masters was to design and build a wood chair, The Autumn Chair, that could be made fully on a CNC router. CNC routers in the wood industry, especially in a collegiate setting, was a new thing at the time. I ended up making approximately 20 of these out of different species of wood to study how the cutting process would change based on the grain and hardness of the wood.
As my boss Karl Brohammer and I continued to set up the lab and I was finishing my Masters degree, I proposed the idea that we start teaching furniture classes to the college students in addition to the industry students. Approved to do so, I created a very successful furniture design program that Industrial Design and Architecture students could take. As evidence of the success, our students were accepted yearly into either the IWF Design Emphasis or AWFS Fresh Wood trade show furniture competitions, winning awards each year. We were submitting enough pieces into the shows that the AWFS Fresh Wood competition changed the rules to limit the submissions from any school because we were swamping the field with quality pieces.
An unexpected change…
In 2009 the economy tanked and the funding for the lab and our corporate sponsor dried up. Because of what was now a shortfall in budgeting, the staff was let go from AWPL and I unexpectedly had to figure out my next step professionally.
Happening Now!
Welcome to Alan Harp Design …because what you want doesn’t exist.. yet! After 22 years of work at Georgia Tech, I was setting out on my own in 2010 utilizing all of these skills and life lessons I had learned through the years from my parents, shop instructors, professors, coworkers, and friends. Alan Harp Design is a one man shop focused on custom furniture design, upholstered furniture frame design, furniture restoration and repair. Over the past 15 years I’ve designed and built countless custom furniture pieces and brought many family heirlooms back to life through restoration or modification.
I’m always looking for that next interesting project… and it could be yours! Contact me with your project ideas and let’s get started making something beautiful!
404-935-2654