Name: Red Chair
Year: 2017 Fall
Size: 15x17x29 in
Material: Ash and Milk Paint
The Red chair, from my perspective, is a significant development of my design concept. I shift my attention from outside to the inside, from the flesh to the bone, from the appearance to the structure.
Generally, chairs are made up of legs, the seat, the back, with or without arms. These components could be seen as the body and limbs, which are directly connected to support the human body weight. In that case, I want to do something different, design the force transmission in a more interesting way.
Different from the “body and limbs” structure, I put the front legs and the seat together as one continuous piece, the hind legs and the back as another. Between the two pieces, there’s one more curved wood board sandwiched as a load bearing structure which holds the body weight and spreads the force to the front and back section at the same time.
To connect the three wood boards, I create two sets of small wood columns in an uniform size on both the seat and the back. The repetitive dimension of these columns builds an unified design language. Besides, I use milk paint( more details in WOOD FINISH) to paint the chair in red to cover the distracting natural pattern on the wood and let the unique structure become more prominent.
During the process, I tried to utilize the Steam Bending technique to form the wood board in a curved shape. Unfortunately, it was difficult to bend the wood to a strict 90-degree angle. Firstly, the wood would easily crack when it was forced to the right angle. Secondly, the wood would shrink and change the angle when it got dry. I failed twice. So, I used mortise and tenon to connect the leg to the seat eventually.
