Salone Satellite Research

Esquisse Four - Understanding Form

Our first mock ups of our chair designed turned out to be challenging as we had no idea how to make the locking system work. The structure seemed to be fine when applying weight but we weren't sure how it would stand up in full scale. When applying pressure to the seat we noticed that the sides wanted to push outwards, weakening our structure. We decided to go home and think of how to strengthen this portion and improve the locking system and meet up in a few days. The top images show our completed scale mock-up which as you can see is completely different to the previous version we had been working towards. We found that we were unable to create a great locking system without ruining the design of the chair so we opted to go for Kim's more simplified version of a chair that is created out of one piece of card. The chair is extremely minimal in design and folds up in seconds. The structure is strong however we still need to work on the locking system. We used a tab to hold the chair together and could actually stand on top of the seat without any movement in the structure which shows progress from our previous attempts at a smaller scale. Amy suggested perhaps folding the tab back onto the other flap that creates the triangular seat support and then bending it back on itself would strengthen the locking system. As the piece is created of one piece of card we did not find a large enough piece of card to create a one to one mock up but we feel it would be structurally sturdy enough to hold the weight.

History of Furniture Design

Esquisse Three - Locking Systems

First Attempt and Final Prototype