The Interval Collection: An Intersection of Brawn and Beauty

When it comes to beautiful and functional furniture for your home entertainment and storage needs, BDI's Interval™ collection expertly melds modern design and old-world craftsmanship to create a uniquely handcrafted collection of cabinets.

The collection features a striking grid-based hardwood door design, backed with fabric-covered perforated metal, that helps to promote natural airflow, conceal the contents when the door is closed, and enable remote control signals and clear audio to pass through easily, along with a host of other user-friendly features.  

But the genesis (and genius) of Interval's design runs even deeper – and with more history. While traditional Japanese shoji screens partly inspire the overall design, the construction utilizes interlocking wood joints – referred to as half-lap joints – which increase the strength and longevity of each console. 

Here is a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inspiration and thoughtful design that went into the creation of Interval.

A Handmade Tale

Every Interval product is handcrafted, designed, and assembled with a personal touch. The shoji-screen-inspired design utilizes interlocking joints that have been used in traditional fine furniture making for centuries and are also the cornerstone of this collection.

A notch is cut halfway through a piece of wood with laser precision to create the lock. Two similarly-notched pieces of wood then are fit together perpendicularly, which makes the half-lap joint.

To ensure precision, BDI uses a computer numerical control (CNC) router to make the cuts, ensuring notches descend halfway through each piece of wood and guarantee a snug, stable fit. The operators repeat this process hundreds of times for each piece of furniture.

For example, the Interval 7249 cabinet has seven horizontal slats and 33 vertical slats, which adds up to 231 precision joints.

Kickin’ It Old School

We use the half-lap design detail for the Interval collection for several reasons. It’s a tried and true, well-tested wood joinery technique that lends more stability and longevity to each piece than other joining techniques, and it’s been at the heart of iconic Japanese designs for centuries, partly for that reason.

Precision Handling

The half-lap design of the Interval door ensures that each piece of wood fits snugly with the intersecting wood slats to create a deceptively strong lattice design that supports the entire door structure.

However, since Interval uses natural wood, the design team also had to account for its tendency to absorb and release moisture over time while retaining the overall integrity. This was vital since humidity and temperature changes are known to cause an occasional expansion in natural wood doors, causing cabinet doors not to fit and close properly.

BDI offset this issue by using precision cutting techniques and glue at each joint and running the wood grain in perpendicular directions. This means the vertical slat grains run one direction and the horizontal slat grains run the other way, which creates more natural structural support while negating expansion problems.

To further the durability of this design, we put Interval through the gamut of testing, including:

Ultimately, these design considerations have created a collection built to last, providing highly functional, durable, and beautiful furniture for many years to come. 

Interval is available in two media cabinet sizes and a tall-frame console cabinet, making it the perfect addition for all your entertainment or storage needs. 

Click here to explore the entire Interval Collection.