Keystone Chair

Something really exciting happened while we were all busy doing our buildings last week (that's the actual terminology we use) two grads (elaine and jen) came up to me and Owen and asked us if we want to participate in this cardboard chair competition called chair affair.

We got together, charreted the idea for one day and came up with a chair all of us are really proud of.

Most of the designs from the past use layers and layers of cardboard stacked in an integral fashion to create a form that can support human loads. when we all got together we felt we should push a sustainable agenda and limited ourselves to one sheet that can fold into a compact stool for a studio environment.

The project was very weak during the first several trials and the vertical walls would buckle under the weight of anyone's full force but with the introduction of a secondary structural piece (Cut from the same one sheet) the whole project solidified and the design came to life.

We started with small origami-like mock ups and played around with different systems of folding, cutting and scoring until we came up with an idea we felt would be plausible.

Three or four tries later with actual cardboard sheets we came up with a design that was pretty streamlined and sexy. Here's the final presentation board we submitted.

I think we have a good chance at getting something.