Industrial Design · rfalconvargas
Creak — Tension-Driven Metal Accordion
Creak is an ergonomic, tension-driven metal accordion fabricated from cut and folded sheet metal. It explores an interlocking system of equally spaced segments held by hems that collapse and extend like a hand-held accordion, controlled by the user’s grip tension — moving from initial tension-driven parts, through a negative-space geometric form, to a refined mechanism.
Discipline
Industrial Design
Medium
Sheet-metal kinetic object
Gallery
Selected frames
Reflection
Reflection
Creak was an exercise in making cold sheet metal feel alive in the hand. I kept chasing a mechanism where the material’s own tension and a hem detail did the work of a hinge, so the piece collapses and springs with a literal creak. The name came from that sound — I leaned into the honesty of metal instead of hiding it. Simplifying the manufacturing into repeatable interlocking segments while keeping the motion controlled was the real design fight.
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