How to design a chair in four weeks

A new school year has started. On industrial design we have had four weeks to design a wooden stick chair.

The purpose of the task is to learn about the relations between the body, the space and the chair.

We have also talked about responsible and sustainable possibilities within production of contemporary furniture design.

We have worked in groups two and two together, so that we at the end of the course could make a 1:1 prototype of the chair.

I would like to show you the design process that we have been through:

Week 1
A good collaboration is important, so we made some rules for our group to follow.

Christina Wadstrøm and I went to the library to borrow some books about furniture design to talk about what kind of furniture we liked. We took some photos and clustered it all on the wall for inspiration.

For the rest of the week we used a method called rapid prototyping. It is about making a lot of miniature models, to help you decide what the chair maybe could look like.

At the same time I had a lot of fun using an app on my iPhone called “Mirrorgram”.

I made these photos and it inspired us a lot while we were making the miniature prototypes.

In the end of the week we had to choose a model to work further with. We chose this one:

Week 2
In this week we were focusing at the proportions between body and chair by measuring some different chairs at the school.

And then we went to the workshop to build a lot of prototypes in 1:1 so we could test the chair for height and comfort.

Actually we made a new chair every day.

Week 3
In the third week we were supposed to focus on details of the design: how should the chair be assembled? What kind of wood and techniques would we like to use etc.

We were still sketching and modelling, taking one step forward and one step back.

We used the 3D program Rhinoceros to make some small changes and to help us decide the last details of the chair. We also made the final technical drawing in the program.

Week 4
In the last week we agreed at the final details of the chair and to build the final chair in the workshop. The curved piece of wood along the seat side of the chair is important for our design but also for the construction and the stability of the chair. In order to bent the wood, we used a technique called laminating.

Lamination succeeded! Then we used the last days working late to build and assemble the chair. And now I can show you our final chair:

The chair is made of ash. We have focused on the direction of the grain so the chair looks beautiful. The backrest is short and supports only the lower of your back so you sit in a correct position. Now the next step is to participate with the chair in the FSC design award.