‘dialogo’ Chair
scale: 52″h x 27″w x 32″d
scale type: Person scale
client: One Good Chair Design Competition
client type: Architects
status: Prototype Built 2009
services: Conceptual Design; Visualization; Prototyping
description: The human body is not designed to sit still. Yet a chair that embraces the notion that the body is constantly in motion – even while in rest – is absent from the history of chair design. The canon of chair design is full of singular, static, determined forms that fail to engage the human body as a dynamic system. Theses fixed forms dictate the act of sitting to the user, effectively rejecting the flexibility which the human body requires. Users are asked to sit rather than invited to participate in the act of sitting. Chair design has amounted to little more than an imposition of the designer’s will upon the user.
The dialogo chair envisions the act of sitting as an on-going dialogue between the user and the chair.
The chair supports myriad seating configurations, but privileges positions of repose, conversation, studyand lounge. The chair engages the user in an active back-and-forth determination of the position best suited to the user’s social-situational needs. In response to the dynamic nature of the user’s form and requirements, the dialogo chair takes its form in a continual state of flux. Of equal import to the chair’s form and feel is its fabrication. The basic chair components are designed to be CNC milled and flat-pack shipped in order to minimize fabrication and shipping costs. The sitting surfaces are intended to be woven by the user: a radical re-interpretation of the supply chain that moves a portion of the fabrication process to the end user. This re-distribution of labor reduces the embodied energy of the chair while established the emotional bond between the chair and the user.
The “greenest” thing is to minimize production and champion re-use. The term “green building” is, in a sense, an oxymoron. Truly ‘green’ design moves beyond basic material considerations towards products that establish enduring emotional bonds with their users, a bond that ensures an extended use which maximizes the initial investment in embodied energy. The dialogo chair moves chair design in this new direction.