E-LC1
(Executive Lounge Chair - 1)
Senior Studio 1
Duration: 15 Weeks
Design Brief
Design and fabricate a piece of contemporary seating that demonstrates your developing expertise in furniture design and construction.
Initial Research
Modern / Sleek/ Serious / Relaxed
A serious Chair for sophisticated people
Who is “sophisticated” or at least who thinks they are.
-Boomers
-Executives
-Doctors
-Lawyers
-Tech Bros
-Generally High earning individuals
- They like status symbols
- Money
- Experience
- They want respect through material possessions
Important words for these people
-Material Celebration -Premium Materials -Handmade
-Luxurious -Refined -Masculine
Concepts and Refinement
During concepting I decided to experiment with concepts in metal and wood as both meet the requirements of material celebration, luxury, and refinement.
These next 3 concepts are much more the style that I wanted to replicate however none of them felt proportionally correct
Critique Takeaways
-metal forms feel more on language
-wood concepts feel like just another lounge chair that exists
-lounge chair style works with user group and context
-spindly/ spider like forms are moving in a positive direction
-more interesting seating surface than a normal cushion should be used
(leather/ natural cording/ high end fabrics)
Future considerations
-focus on sleek form with simple to read lines
-triangulation of materials for strength
-make less organic and more buildable/ repeatable
Final Design Direction
This was the final render of this chair before making a model and having a professional critique with members in industry.
Fabrication Process for Model
Changes and Professional Critique
-Taller seat height from initial render +2in in both front and back (proportions felt small)
-more lateral supports needed in the future
-arms are not comfortable and maybe aren’t needed at all
-metal is too thin and feels cheap, move from 3/8 and 1/2 to 5/8 everywhere
-cording makes it feel outdoor/ cheap
-proportions are close but geometry needs fixed in small areas
-rounding legs into themselfs helps splaying and looks more refined
-paint feels cheap, keep a more natural look to be more true to material (more luxurious)
-comfortable seating position (small increase in seat pitch would help
-remove bar near head and rework back design to be safer/ more comfortable (lower or raise back height by a few inches)
-terminate welds in better positions to add to luxury feeling
Final Concept Refinement
Colorway Decision
After asking a variety of demographics
(Executives, Boomers, Gen X, Students)
Younger people find the Brown leather more appealing while the Black appeals to an older demographic without regard to income level
Parts Drawings
Before beginning the final construction of this chair I developed a set of part files to keep me organized throughout my process. I preplanned the lengths of material to minimize waste and also the ends of the rods to make welding the connection points more consistent as a novice.
The lateral supports were made to fit at the end using the preplanned out scraps off of the other lengths of steel. 4 10ft rods of 5/8 solid steel were used in the construction of this product.
Final Process Photos
During this process I had to remake both the legs and back. The first frame that I made did not have enough seat rake and the back was far too wide. The second version had some refined measurements based on how the steel reacted being bent.
After the lateral supports were added I brought the frame to be sand blasted and powder coated. Once I received the frame back from powder coating I was able to begin making a pattern for the leather seat and back surfaces.
Semester Reflection
This semester was challenging in many new ways as I tackled learning a few new processes this semester. Starting with design I feel that after my summer abroad my sketching skills have improved dramatically and that has allowed my ideation process to flourish more as I can imagine more complex forms. I believe that I did a good job simplifying the forms and making the relationships between features more evident throughout the process. Refining the form to the final more luxurious version was very fun and I believe it brought the work to a much higher level. Although my process was smooth there were a number of things that I did have to figure out in my process to end up with a nice final result. First of all, bending metal into itself to form loops is difficult for a few more reasons than I thought. Keeping both ends of the metal level to each other was a challenge that involved using 2 different levels and an angle gauge to keep the level of precision that I needed, and I was still about 2-3 degrees off so the points didn’t exactly connect to each other in a straight line until the final connection was fitted into place. This unevenness is hidden by the leather going on at the end of the process. Marking out where to start and end bends was just a matter of practice and testing to make sure that I understood how the bends are formed. Once I understood this It was just a lot of marking and making a test bend before each bend on the final piece being added to the chair. Learning to weld was also just a matter of practicing enough to be confident that my welds would be strong enough to hold even after grinding them down to make them look good. Shaping with a grinding is a very difficult process that I luckily hid most of the imperfections by using a textured powder coat. Leatherworking was another new process that I had to take on. I found lots of success using the laser cutter and paper patterns to determine the size of the final patterns that would be used to cut the seat and back. Marking out the leather was a slow process but was well worth the time as the result shows how precise I remained throughout the process. Learning to double-needle stitch was also fun but was very rough on my hands due to how much force you need to get proper tension on each stitch. In the end I learned many processes this semester and became much more confident in my ability to adapt to design critiques in an effective way. Next semester I will definately be focusing on improving my graphic design and story telling abilities.
