Back to class...

Week 10: Cardboard chair brief

"Design and produce a working chair made from cardboard and adhesive only. Consider the following aspects:
* Structural strength
* Quantity of materials used
* Comfort/ ergonomics
* Style
* Target audience"

The class (of course) isn't really about the chair at all but the problem solving strategy a designer needs to use to arrive at the finished design: recognition of the problem, spontaneous trials, research, clarification and resolution.

We undertook steps one top three last night, culminating in the creation of a maquettes (I get to make dolls house furniture for class? Cool!)

My brainstorming (aka "spontaneous trials") page: And my maquette, the "First date (confessional) seat":Which came from the idea of creating private spaces in a public area.

The high back came from a combination of some chairs made by my hairdresser back in New Zealand (don't ask!) and Charles Rennie Macintosh's use of height in his tea room chairs to provide a sense of privacy.

At first I left it at that but then started playing with the concept of love seats being used for courting couples. I wanted to repeat the triangular form of the chair in the back and once I hit on the idea of making them cutouts it all fell into place.

I was thinking about the non-traditional speed dating techniques that have arisen over the past few years and how they play with your perception of the other person: dates where you can only write, not speak and dinner in the dark etc, plus how internet dating has meant you often get to learn the intimate details of someone's mind without having seen them face to face.

So to create a setting where you don't see the whole person you're talking with but just snippets, with a design that alludes to the Catholic confessional intrigued me.

I added the zigzag to the top at the last minute but would like to experiment with other finishes as I find it too busy...