CONCEPTS AND PRECEDENTS The development for the chair started very early. The start of the development process saw the chair being of a more conventional shape—a solid piece of cast concrete supported by studded legs. However, the further I developed the idea the more apparent it became that the conventional chair was not justified. I had to stop looking at chairs by Charles Eames, Eileen Gray and Ludwig Mies Van De Rohe. Those chairs would not form a good precedence for the design because they do not appeal to communicative design. They are spatial designs. They take into account the vernacular of a well-lit space. It didn’t agree with the goals of what this project set out to explore—i.e. the connection between the physical and the metaphysical. Therefore, something more modular would be better suited as a precedent. The question was raised as to what would be a good modular precedent to form a design on? This project is all about how an individual (user) interacts with the space around them (be it physical or digital). Therefore, it would be logical to look at the human body to solve this—in particular the very part of the human body that is responsible for supporting and dictating the chairs that we sit on—our spine!
Opposite page (top)—The Eames fiberglass chair was one of my first studies. It was an idea that I had fantasised about. This is a piece of design that all designers have idealised at some point. Opposite page (right)—This Eileen Gray chair does not follow the conventional rules of having a symmetrical shape and the ideology behind it is bold and daring. Opposite page (left)—Ludwig Mies Van De Rohe is often considered as being the personified epitome of modernism and this is reflected not only in architecture but also in the fact that he was multidisciplinary. The chair is something that idealises that.