2021
Bubble Chair
The Bubble Chair was a product of the current climate of 2021. Still in the midst of the pandemic, so much of what people wanted and needed had completely shifted. We needed escapes, comfort, creative outlets, and connection to name a few. This chair is not about the pandemic but it is a result of new trends and topics that rose out of it.
Furniture, Design, Play
FOR SALE
While all cooped up inside, people decided to take control of the only environment they could, the home. More than ever people were feeling inclined to curate their spaces and since it was just us in these incubated areas, why not make them fun, outrageous and playful? During a time of uncertainty, we had to become resourceful. Suddenly, people were DIY’ing to get away from the computer screen; with it rising a new appreciation for craft and slow design that is accessible. These are some of the topics that initially informed my chair.
The Bubblegum Chair was a five month long study of designing and executing a chair. With awareness growing about the benefits of slowing down ourselves and the environment alike, the intensive process of creating the Bubblegum Chair was in touch with this reality. The formal design of the chair is meant to be approachable, comforting, and playful. Unlike much of the furniture that we know well, which can be pretentious, rigid, and uncomfortable. Or the reverse: lazy, uninspiring, obvious and cheap. Besides a potential upgrade in an office chair to prepare for long hours at home for the foreseeable future, a lounge chair felt like the next essential furniture piece to have in a home. I thought of the most prolific lounge chair in my mind, the Womb Chair by Eero Saarinen. The functionality of this chair was a major inspiration; the point of the design being that the user could curl up and sit in just about any position and be comfortable as a baby in a mother’s womb. I found this notion to be essential in the functional design of my lounge chair. As I dove further into my research, I found other designers had also embraced this concept in their own ways like Percival Lafer with his MP-81 lounge chair, or Sergio Rodrigues with the Mole chair. Designs inviting their user in, employing overflowing upholstery and woodwork to reflect it. An exploration of softness was going to be at the forefront of my process.
Playfulness was another main topic I planned to explore while desinging my chair. Up until this point, I had mainly designed for children; I have found so much freedom in my design thinking when the audience has been children. It has helped me connect to my very first artistic inclinations from when I was little. I wanted to maintain this freedom even though the chair would be scaled for the average adult. At a time when Gustaf Westman was taking off, the Ultrafragola mirror was a dream piece to obtain and Dusen Dusen’s colorful patterns were everywhere, it was a playground in the design world. Everything was off the table and it was all about relinquishing previous ideas and coming up with something fun and refreshing.
2021 - poplar, pink cowhide, green hand stitching
What is even more fun than the final product’s design itself is the processes it took to arrive there. Quick design ideation began with thumbnail sketches, design research, rapid prototypes and everything else in between. Following ideation came CAD mockups which I pulled full scale drawings from. These drawings gave me a sense of scale in real life to begin translating my work up until this point to the woodshop.
This is where endless prototyping on the lathe began. I explored the tool itself and the shapes I could create with it. I tested glue ups for blanks to be put on the lathe and the Mortise and Tenon joinery. Arriving at the end of the semester I patterned the bubblegum pink sling seat to be cut, glued, and hand stitched onto the frame of the chair.
