Four years ago, I was technically homeless. While working for Intalio, I was traveling so much (about 3 weeks every month) that I decided to leave my apartment, sell most of my belongings, and live in hotels. Whenever I would come back from a trip, I would crash at the Hilton Garden San Mateo during the week, and the W San Francisco on week ends. I did that for about 7 months, then decided that I needed a place to store my most valuable possessions, including some books and CDs. This is when the Monolab|Design Trunk was born. Then, Apple released the first aluminum-made PowerMac, and the project went out of control…

The original idea was to build a modern version of a Louis Vuitton trunk that could be left at the hotel in between stays, featuring drawers and hangers. Because I like the feel of anodized aluminum, the whole thing was to be built using this metal, with industrial-grade profiles ordered from Item. This German manufacturers supplies the components that are used for industrial machines around the world, including the ones that make car engines for Porsche. Needless to say, these profiles are pretty solid.

During long oversea flights, I sketched the design of my futuristic piece of luggage. After 50,000 miles or so, I decided that I had a workable design, and passed an order for most of the parts I needed to build a prototype. Then, something terrible happened: Apple released the first aluminum-made PowerMac, and its design was so perfect that I “had” to get one in my trunk, positlvely. After feverishly completing some back of the enveloppe calculations, I concluded that it would fit, and promptly revised my design, making way for this monster of a computer, and getting rid of the drawers and hangers in order to make room for a large LCD display, an audiophile amplifier, and a pair of loudspeakers.

Finding all the right components turned into an interesting exercise in and by itself, mainly because I wanted everything to be made of aluminum. The outer shell and embedded computer were there, but the aluminum-made Apple Cinema Display had not been released at the time (I used a Sony display in the interim), and I spent a fair amount of time looking for hinges made of extruded aluminum and loudspeakers built in the same material. Eventually, I found everything I needed, and this lead to the following prototype, now on display at the Monolab|Workspace Palo Alto (slideshow).

This piece of art is about 5′ tall, and weights close to 300 lbs. It is mounted on wheels, features oversized handles, and has three doors, two on front and one on top. It is home for an Apple Mac Pro computer with 4TB of storage, an Apple Cinema Display 23″, a Music Hall Mambo amplifier (also made of aluminum), and a pair of aluminum-enclosed Webern loudspeakers manufactured by Vienna Acoustics. Essentially, my trunk could be described as the first 4TB iPod.

In order to grant access to the DVD tray, the Apple Mac Pro is mounted on industrial ball bearings that are a miniature version of the ones used for the ladder mounted on fire trucks. And to make operations as smooth as possible, the two front doors are attached to hydraulic dampeners, similar to the ones used by car manufacturers for rear hatches. Once again, the whole thing is pretty solid, which is why it’s so heavy.

Once the original order for parts was sent, initial assembly took about 4 weeks. I would work on it during the week-end, realize that I needed some additional parts, work on a new design during the week, send my order on Thursday afternoon, get delivery of new parts on Friday morning, and work on it again over the week-end. Eventually, I had a working prototype, which got partially completed once I installed the Apple Mac Pro and Apple Cinema Display. I eventually got engaged and moved into a new apartment, where the thing stood for a couple of years, until we moved into a new house. During the move, one wheel broke, and I left the trunk in my garage for a year. Then, my wife and I decided to create the first Monolab|Workspace, and thought that it would be a perfect place for my creation. We fixed the wheel, added the front plaque engraved with the Monolab logo, and moved the whole thing to its new home.

Mission accomplished.