Prototype Chair

The chair is ubiquitous and often mundane, yet offers a persistently interesting design problem that allows for virtually infinite resolutions. This project aims to develop a chair from the central idea of bending plywood, exploring the process through precedent study, modeling and prototyping.

This chair is conceived as two material systems which are structurally dependent on each other to form the final product: the seat as a curved plywood sheet and the undercarriage as a traditional solid wood assembly. The molded plywood shell chairs by the Eameses, Alvar Aalto, Jean Prouvé, and others were primary formal inspirations. However, due to a lack of access to the machines necessary for the molding process, kerf bending was adopted as an alternative. This process modifies an existing flat sheet of plywood by cutting a series of saw kerfs into it which allow it to take on curves. Learning this technique became the crux of the project and consumed the majority of prototyping time.