Spatial design
Invent, design and make a chair about you as a person. The chair should be made of wood and otherwise you are free to shape your further ideas. What would you make? Spatial design students Lente Viool, Tom Kruizinga and Roos de Groot designed a chair that symbolises their own personality.
Peace and adventure in organic forms
Tom also set to work on this personal design brief. Tom: ‘I found the characteristics cheerful, adventurous and calm to suit myself. From these characteristics, I looked at what shapes I thought fit with them. I ended up with organic shapes. From this point I started sketching to arrive at my design. My characteristics are reflected in the look of the chair. I am not afraid to try new things. Thus, to make this chair, I tried several new techniques. The chair’s calm, open look suits me.’
Enthusiasm and emotions in motion
Spring: “We started with ourselves. Who am I and what are my characteristics. I looked at how I see myself, but also asked friends how they would describe me. From this, the characteristics: busy, enthusiastic and sensitive emerged. These words became the starting point of my design. The concept I came up with was a chair on which you can express your enthusiasm and energy. You can sit on the chair in different ways and the chair moves/swings with you. This suits me well because I never really sit still. The rocking symbolises the sensitive, my emotions. Those can also rock from time to time.”
Back to the core
Roos compared her traits with the elaboration of an assignment from last school year. Roos: “Last year, we also carried out an assignment with personal traits and I was curious myself whether my traits had changed. This was not the case. At the core, I am still the same person: complex, powerful and passionate. I visualised this through the X symbol. I myself also have a tattoo of x=x and I thought it would be nice to apply this to this design brief as well. I used the X shape as the base of the chair.”
Makers in the workshop
The students made their chair in the workshop at school. Tom: “Every Tuesday evening, the workshop at our school is open longer in the evening. Since I had a laborious design, I definitely needed these extra hours.” Rose adds: “The atmosphere in the workshop was really super fun. Because it was a personal assignment, it also brought the class closer together, which was very special.”
Learning together from challenges
Besides the concept, it was also important for the chair to be practical and comfortable. Spring: “It is and always will be an object of use. It is not only to look at, but also to use. That’s why it was also important design was practical.” Looking at her final result, Lente is satisfied “Everything went very well. I got a lot of compliments.”
Tom: “I look back on a super fun assignment in which I worked with many new machines and devices for the first time. Beforehand, I had made a dummy of my design and the final work ended up being exactly what I had hoped for. I there was only 3mm difference between my dummy and my final design!”
It was equally exciting for Rose. “I worked with firewood. A type of wood that splits relatively easily. I wanted to put 2 X symbols on top of each other. This was tricky. Halfway through the assignment, my wood split. Fortunately, my chair made it together with teacher Thijs. I am proud of the translation of myself that I can clearly see in the chair.”