A contemporary, studio furniture-esque chair designed to be more financially accessible. 

Materials: Bending poplar, Ash wood, Felt

Problem: 
Studio furniture can be incredibly expensive and can be inaccessible to the average consumer. The total amount after cost of material and production can be upwards of $1000. 

Solution: 

I wanted to find an efficient way to design a contemporary, studio furniture-esque chair and make it more financially accessible.

Process: 

In order to create the form that I designed, I used bent lamination techniques. I could have used paperbacked veneer, okoume, or aircraft ply which would have made my design easier to build (it has the properties to make difficult curves in wood) however, it would have been significantly more expensive-- each sheet priced over $50. Instead I used the cheapest alternative, bending poplar, which was $30 per sheet but difficult to bend.      

I made many iterations of the form on Rhino and laser cut them onto the bending poplar. After many failed attempts to make the bending poplar bend the way I wanted it to, I decided to perforate the sheets in order to force the bending poplar to bend into a dramatic curve. I tried a few different methods of perforation and found success by laser cutting perforations along the radius of the inner part of the form.

For the prototype, I made a mould for the perforated bending poplar, turning a stack of insulation foam on the lathe into a cone ($30 for a 4'x8' sheet which I then cut into pieces). I then cut the cone at an angle. Afterward, I used this mould to make a 3-ply shell in the vacuum. 

Moulds:

I made ash wood veneer, made two part moulds for the middle leg, the pointed curve at the top of the chair. For the curvier side legs, I wrapped a bike tube around the veneers to ensure that there were no gaps, clamped and zip tied them to a found 6" PVC pipe. For all of the legs, I left the ends of the veneer unglued so that way I could eventually glue them seamlessly onto the curves of the chair.