A chair is more than a chair!

Spent the morning on the Design Thinking Skills module of my online Art & Activity course. With a temperature of minus 2 it was a day for staying indoors!   We had to take an ordinary object and explore its design history.  I chose a kitchen chair and how it has changed in design and material used in production throughout the years. For instance, the chairs in my blip are about a hundred years apart in their manufacture, design and material used. The wooden one has a seat cut from solid wood (and not from glued together slats of wood like most wooden chairs today), and has legs; the green acrylic chair has metal chrome covered folding supports in place of legs. The wooden one is heavier than the acrylic one.  Both are prone to deterioration – the wooden one from woodworm, and the acrylic/metal one from chrome pitting.



Then we had to design a seat for Astronauts, which had to take into consideration the lack of gravity. Actually that might be relevant to designing chairs for ordinary people when we start colonising other planets. According to Prof Stephen Hawkins that might be sooner than we think given the fact we are destroying our present planet bit by bit. Gravity will be different from Earth’s and will affect the design and materials used of ordinary objects like chairs. Hawkins is giving the BBC Reith Lectures this year – 26th January at 9 am on Radio 4. A chair is more than a chair.  Have a nice evening in the warm, Everyone!