Chair Project

For our deconstruct reconstruct project we were givenfive days to complete the project and also a chair, the chairs varied from old plastic school chairs to antique stools, the image above is the chair me and my partner Laura were given No 39.
I was happy with my chair as it was old fashioned and had interesting details. For the project we only had a couple of restrictions,one being that we had to use every part of the chair in the finial model and that we had to have tension somewhere in the chair.

The project entailed that we had to

deconstruct the chair(image on left)

and reconstruct it in a manner which

suited it, meaning the chair no longer

being functional or reliable, we were

looking mainly for it to be aesthetically

pleasing and unusual.

The legs as a whole seemed the most interesting aspect of the chair to me, with their rounded shape, this developed the thought that we were looking to change the properties which a chair upheld (e.g. being reliable to sit on) I could turn some of these on their heads, for example....a chair not being held up by its legs...what if these legs dangled off ground or float midair.

The age of the chair seemed to bring ideas of quality and value, which developed into the idea of a diamond as diamonds are also very old and represent value. (image on right)

Through many sketches I began to fragment the chair legs into parts smaller than its original components (image on left) This made me think about physically separating the legs into smaller parts to add more emphasis on the legs of the chair while I was sketching the legs fragmented the lines connecting the drawing reminded me of string holding them together, this seemed interesting and also changed the legs properties from being strong and sturdy to fragile and flexible.

A plan was put into action to separate the legs into smaller part with an free standing saw machine in the workshop, this didn’t take long and we ended up with hundreds or tiny pieces, in order for the string to go through the parts we started drilling holes into the pieces ( we couldn’t drill when legs were whole as the pieces were too long for the drill to go right through to the other side ) this proved too time consuming as we only had a day or so left for the project to be completed, eventually we had to use black tape to connect it to the sting, which in the end created a nice pattern against the brown of the paint on the legs(end product on right)

It was decided that as the chair was about old and new we would use some silver wire and duck tape to express the new and reflective aspect which would cover the top and the fragmented wooden legs would represent the older side which would be on the bottom. The image on the right is the top half of the model- The modern half.

We wrapped wire around the top of the chair seat, through the holes to create a pointed cage (insert on left) which would be the top half of the diamond shape- we later covered this side with the black duck tape to make it more modern and left the other stained, chipped and exposing the wood and paint.

The finished product was hung in the quad in the centre of the art school from a tree.The legs were finished by attaching them to the base and tying them at the bottom to finish the diamond shape.

The Project was very helpful in broadening my mind, at first when you think about having to reconstruct a chair there does not seem like you have much to work with but in fact the possibilities are endless and this is visible from the end model, as most people would not be able to tell it was once a wooden chair. On the whole the project was good in widening my mind and also gave me an insight into what’s possible in a short time period and thus helped me manage my time much more effectively.