You’ve seen the chair designs of Kenneth Smythe on SolidSmack before, but that will not be the last you’ll see. With hundreds of chair and table variations in the works, he’s elevating the visual function of sitting, above the seat and creating designs based on a musical passacaglia of furniture design floating in a narrative of asymmetric permutations.
Guest post by Bradley Derry from bradleyderry.com
Design is details. Design is the tiny elements in a product that work their way into final production from hours of sketching, prototyping, and CAD. Details are what the designers agonize over and what the manufactures spend so much time trying to get just right. This post is a homage to all the people who make these details.
I spent a good amount of time yesterday at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), New York City’s annual showcase for contemporary design. The show brings thousands of visitors each year to see over 500 exhibitors displaying product from all over the world. Many visitors glaze right over the products on display missing many design elements, so I made it a point to pick out 60 details to highlight. Did you spot the same details? Did you spot better ones? Take a look…
Can you think of a more uncomfortable chair to sit in than an airport chair? I can’t. Add to that the delight of sharing the vast majority of the world’s germs, bacteria and food particles with the other happy people at the airport and really, sitting just doesn’t get any better. One thing that can make it better though, is a better chair for your derrière.
SolidWorks is posing just the challenge to you in the SolidWorks Green Design Contest. The goal? Modify a chair design to be lower impact, and hopefully a bit more stylish than that sheety tube chunk above. Oh, you’ll like this too. The top prize… a trip to a Eco-resort in Belize… fire up the jet engines.
Gaze upon it. Don’t touch! You’ll mar the smooth birch laminate and formica colorcore. Just look. It’s a thing of butt-holding beauty. Chunky, industrial, modern, vintage, dare we say PLAYFUL? …all mixed together in four legs and bucket to hold your bottom.
The chair designs you are about to experience are created by Kenneth Smythe. Above you see is his latest creation, the SYNERGISTIC SYNTHESIS XVII sub b1 – If your chair doesn’t have a name like that, it’s filth. The San Francisco based designer draws inspiration from science, using observations seen in nature to develop the chair ideas… then auctioned them off for thousands of dollars. Thank you nature. Your work is done. Here’s a look at three of his creations. Which do you want?
One look at this and you’ll want to grab a vat of melted butter. What happens when design goes head on with engineering?
Something beautiful and crustacean-like.
The collaboration between the two disciplines can yield some pretty amazing products and at ICFF, one of the largest contemporary furniture shows in North America. This year, there was a lot of that going around and the Lobster Chair from Lund and Paarmann is a perfect example to get our claws on. Imagine the conversation between the designer and the engineer on this product…
Follow Us:
