Post 3: Brutalist Shoe Cleaner Upcycle Progress

My upcycle project strives to create a shoe cleaner with a brutalist aesthetic.

As I approached towards putting together my shoe cleaner, I have made some progress. Ultimately at this point, I am only concerned with possible alternative designs and with acquiring steel bristles to act as the shoe cleaner.

A major concern I had was the width of the y-shaped steal structure I was able to scrap from the ITLL. I was concerned that the width of the piece was not wide enough to accommodate for the width of a shoe. I got very lucky, and was able to go to the ITLL again and get an identical piece. These pieces are able to be combined side by side for a substantial platform.

Above is the original piece. This was able to be combined for two pieces as shown below.

My major concerns now are keeping the cleaner stable when used and also adhering to the brutalist aesthetic I seek to have for this project. As seen in the above photo, I was able to attach a piece of metal to the underside of the bottom. This will act as a counter weight. It is not enough quite yet, however it is a start to maintaining balance of the cleaner when used.

The front side shown will be where steel bristles will be implemented. This face will be sufficient in terms of area and ergonomics for a user to wipe their shoes.

The wires currently used to secure the pieces of metal together right now are 16 gauge wires acquired from the ITLL. I am worried that their presence will possibly take away from the brutalist aesthetic I seek, yet I believe they will not be visible after the installation of the steel bristles. Due to my lack of welding experience, I will have to stick with this for now. It is not perfect in terms of securing the various pieces together, but will suffice for now.

I have previously thought to flare out the sides for cleaning the sides of a shoe. However with how wide the base is now, I believe this design is irrelevant, and the user could approach the main face at different angles to clean off desired portions of their shoe.

I hope the steel bristles will be easy to simply super glue on the steel plates. I wish to have all materials here be 100% free and recycled, but I am growing worries towards acquiring the steel bristles in such a manner. If no progress is made in that, I will probably have to resort to ordering that product online.

Above is a side view of the project so far. It would be pretty hard to deviate from the intended brutalist aesthetic due to the steel pieces being so angular. The additional steel has significantly increased the weight of the shoe cleaner, yet the top-heavy nature of it will require me to add additional counter weight. If you have any recommendations as to what you would do from this step please comment them.