In our last chair post, Digitizing a Place to Sit, we showed you our initial process of digitizing our 4 Finnish bent wood case-study chairs (we have since uploaded a video to better demonstrate the process).

We now take our measured drawings to produce a 1:1 prototype of the shells in accordance with Finnish practice.

Taking the initial point cloud measurements in rhino, we clean up the files and surface the curve networks into a digital model. We then cut 25mm sections through the chair profiles and wire cut each section on 25mm foam.

After laminating the foam profiles to create a mold, we sand down the edges to produce the proper curvature. Bent wood veneer is easily imitated by striping one face of foam core and gluing two pieces together at the stripped side. It is a two-person job, but the curvature holds almost immediately after adhesive is applied.

In the final step, we trim the ends and sides to size, and cut out the cymized detail at the corner.

After thorough discussion and analysis of each chair’s functionality, comfort, complexity, construction, details, measurements, aesthetics, and form, we now move forward to design a chair to be used in public space. It is interesting to look at these various chairs (one from the 50’s, one from the 60’s, one from the 80’s and one from the 90’s) as a way to understand different approaches to bending wood as a seat. Each has merits and shortcomings, and I feel we gained a great detail in learning the general parameters of chair dimensions for the human body.

We will develop our profiles and concepts in Rhinoceros 3d, test our ideas with 1:1 prototyping, and eventually execute our final shells out of bent wood in TaiK’s forming ovens. After that come the legs…

This work by A.D.Morley & J.A.Wong is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.