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F08

A creature called chair

Soft goods, Wood working 

 

Furniture making
April - May 2023

Wood working

Abstract


This project aims to make emotional durable children furniture that behaves similar to animal body gesture and act as a ‘family pet’ furniture.

This chair invites people to rethink our relationship with furnitures, with pets and how empathy is evoked.




This project aims to make emotional durable children's chair that behaves similarly to animal body and acompany children as a ‘family pet’.


This chair invites people to rethink our relationship with furniture and how furniture equally influence us and our interior atmosphere with expressions and gestures.







Observing

Let’s observe this creature and get to know more about them.


The pet chair is one of the many extant species of furniture. The pet chairs live mostly indoor but they can adapt to a variety of environment such as gardens and balconies. Some are hard and looks like wood, but some are softer and more furry. They are similar in appearance to stools and children’s chair. 

A grown pet chair is generally 20 inches tall and 10 inches long. They usually weigh about 3 to 5 pounds. Despite their small size, they are strong to hold the weight of an adult. But they do have limits, try not to over burden them.


This pet chair is a tame and slow creature, and very friendly to human. It is often seen standing by itself and being absent in mind, and hardly moves. But it actually has rich body and facial language.



Here is one comming towards us, he seems to be in a mood. The pet chair tends to be angry when someone sit on him but moves a lot. This is bad for his ankles.




By obvserving its’ gesture, it seems someone sat on him for too long. Although they love to be sat on but they can get tired sometimes.



But it’s ok because they can have a stretch. Stretching the front legs...



Stretching the back legs...



Laying down...They love to be patted on the back.



They love to be accompanied by children, they can feel lonely when you have to leave the house.



When there’s no one to play with, they would continue looking at the ceiling, being absent in mind.



Please do not feed them anything because they are not capable of chewing or digesting.



The pet chair does not need to be walked like dogs. But they do pee like dogs, secretely. The good news is there is no smell, so no need to stop them.









Ideation

The starting point was to make interactive furniture (pick from desk, chair, closet, bed, lamp, storage cabinet, door, stool, etc) that

either 1) has their own personality (want to be used in a specific way,
or 2) is related to/ can interact one another,
or 3)behave surprisingly,
or 4)builds relationship with users like a family member,
or 5) create a certain connection with user (emotional durable),
or 6) tells stories in some way through themselves...



Inspired by the movie ‘Suzume’, in which the hero was turned into a chair that can walk. I decided to add anthropomorphic elements and physical movements onto furniture shapes.








Sketch models



Models of table, chair, desk lamp/ cushion and storage box were made with pine blocks and rubber bands.

Surpeised by how the people around react to the model, I wanted to maintain the playable element and not focus on the usability of the chair. 

The model is also good in that the chair express emotions with ‘body’ movement. The furniture also have the ability to respond to how the user treat it (eg. Its’ head will be lowered when user lean on the back).




Chair making



I used plywood and shock cords for the full scale model. To reduce weight for achieveing best performance for the shock cord, I chose to make all the legs, seat and back hollow.
This process can be simplified using wood CNC.




1. Legs
Each leg is made of 4 layers of plywood with hollows in the middle. The shape of hollows enable the cord to slide through the leg easily. The tightness of the shock cords can be adjusted through the hole under the legs. Extra cords can be contained in the leg.





2. Head
The head is made of 3 layers of plywood with cord tunnels in the middle. The cord can pass through easily.
The head is fit into a slot on the seat and can incline forward and backward.






3. Seat
For safety, There are slots to fit the chair legs on the base of the seat when placing straight upwards so that the chair is steady for sitting.






Finishing






Soft covering & Upholstery

A soft covering and seat cushion was made with some furry fabric and velcro straps. The coverings and facial expressions are optional and can be changed according to the preferences of the users.






Testing

The chair structure is steady for careful sitting in various directions, and able to make various poses and facial expressions.