Expansion Seating
Tools: Woodworking, Blender, Photoshop
How Might We Explore Expansion to Arrive at an Ergonomic and Functional Material?
The goal of this project was to create a seating area that could lay flat when folded and expand under a person’s weight. This seating area would be able to be applied to various chair bases such as X-chairs, butterfly chairs, or other foldable furniture.
Inspiration and Research
This idea came from my own experience from living in small spaces and currently, dorms, and never being able to find a chair that would fit in my space, and also be aesthetically to my liking.
After researching current folding chairs on the market, I found most to be unsatisfying and aesthetically unpleasing.Talking with classmates, proved this was a common opinion.
I began thinking how we could improve the folding chair by exploring the folding mechanism.
The first iterations of my design were paper cutouts; the cuts were made in a circular pattern so that when pressure was applied at the center, the entire structure would expand in the pressure’s direction.
The first looks-like model was made with suede and worked very well. I made three other prototypes at a medium scale: a circle shape, double square seater, and single square seat.
If I were to make another full-scale model, I would change the spacing of the cuts to make the fabric stronger and less flexible.
Digital visualizations of how the fabric can be applied to various chair bases: in this case, the X folding mechanism.
Proposed folding mechanism sequence.
