Universal Chair

by SJHandley in Workshop > Furniture

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Universal Chair

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The long product description is in the YouTube video:

But basically, if you have a bicycle or a guitar and one bit breaks you don't throw away the whole thing, you repair it, right? But with furniture this tends to be difficult because with most furniture the primary secondary and tertiary materials are integrated. So whilst guitars and bicycles are REPAIRABLE LOCALLY furniture tends to be DISPOSABLE GENERALLY. So when 5% of a bit of furniture gets worn out the whole thing tends to end up in landfill. This is a massive problem, I've seen estimates that there are between 20 and 100 billion chairs on planet earth and in a century most of those will be in landfill. But what if, 100 years ago some genius like Marcel Brewer had designed this chair? Then today we might not even need a chair industry! And instead of buying chairs we would only need to get PARTS of chairs.

Every element is a standard section of wood, a standard fixing or rectangle of material that can be obtained cheaply by most people in most towns. There's zero craftmanship, no mortice and tenon joints, it just bolts together like Meccano. And all anyone would have to do to repair any part of this chair is saw a line, drill a hole or use a screwdriver. The sticks are standard sections and the cover is a single piece of material that laces up like a boot.

Aesthetically I designed it for all human beings. For peasants or rich people, for cafes or offices or dining tables, hence the name, the Universal Chair. Ive done this before with other furniture like my classic sofa bed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSKmd2e1Fz4&t=1196s) but doing it with a chair was much harder as a chair is the ultimate design challenge. By proving it is possible to do this with something as difficult as a chair, it shows there is no excuse for wasting materials with any design challenge.

​frame Without Cushions

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Cushion

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it wraps like a christmas present and laces up like a shoe.

one piece of foam that will never break or wear out. and one piece of material that can be drawn around if ewver you need to cut out another.