Furniture Project... Update.

We are now in week four of our furniture project. My group are trying our hardest to get started making in the workshop but we still have a few things to do before then.

Since I last blogged about this we’ve been coming up with our own furniture designs and figuring out a concept. We got together and did some brain storming Design Studies style! We thought about different types of people and what they wanted out of a piece of furniture, for example most elderly people would probably choose comfort over style whereas young children may want something fun and interactive. We then discussed what types of furniture already exists and what styles we liked. 



Thinking about people’s habits led us to the path we’re on now. We noticed that in general people fidget and move a lot, swinging on chairs is common.  We therefore wanted to create a chair that can give people this option, to swing or not to swing. We’ve gone on to develop an idea of a modern rocking chair, which will hopefully look stylish and give the user the option to rock or be stationary depending on their mood.  We also like the idea of a rocking chair as it is a place for mothers to sooth their child and some people find it relaxing to sit rocking and read a book. We are also thinking about adding a table that rocks along with the chair. Below are images of some rocking chairs we looked at in our research.



1960s Rocking Chair





Unusual Danish rocking chair, designer unknown.





Ku-dir-ka rocking chair by Contraforma





Charles Ray Eames Rocking Chair







 We incorporated our early research in the design (some of this is shown in my previous blog). We are keeping our design very angular and we would like to add some colour.  Below are some sketches from my sketch book.



 1:5 scale models have been made which I still need to photograph and today we were working on our full scale model. The advantages of a full scale model are that it is easier to see areas that need to be changed or tweaked for example the height of the seat or the thickness of the wood.

Work in progress...

Frame of Chair... this may be made from steel.

Tomorrow we will complete our full scale model and amend any problems we have encountered.  Hopefully we’ll get everything sorted and have the go ahead to start in the workshop soon.