Pneu-Fold Inflatable Chair

PNEU FOLD. Ex-Lab:

Digital Design Fabrication

PNEU-FOLD

AN EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH TO PNEUMATIC FORM

Acknowledgement My deepest gratitude to Jas, Adam and whoever contributes to this project, without them this project would not be possible.

Jas Johnston (Coordinator) Adam Markowitz (Coordinator)

CONTENT 1.0 Precedent Study

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2.0 Stool 1

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3.0 Stool 2

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4.0 Experimentation

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5.0 Prototype

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6.0 Detail

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6.0 Final Design

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PRECEDENT STUDY Inflations Interactive Design Form follows Material In this phase, we are to investigate the precedents of own interested design or practices, gathering some ideas to drive the design. The starting point for me is to design an interactive piece that forms the dialogue between user and furniture. Inflation is one of first ideas coming to my mind. In this case, the form of the furniture is determined by this inflating action and material properties.

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A.J.S. AEROLANDE, Inflatable Furniture, 1967

material. PVC

In 1967, Jean Aubert, Jean-Paul Jungmann and Antonie Stinco created A.J.S. Aerolande, initially a vehicle to commercialize their line of inflatable furniture. Their modular approach and architectural attention to structure, proportion and material. After 1968, A.J.S. Aerolande produced a wide range of demountable and modular tents.

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7

C

projection.

Two distinctive inflation design approach from A.J.S Aerolande are investigated through its relation between the joint and form. The first design approach is to produce the modular inflatable form and attach the modular by the straps (left) or snaps (right 1). This simple joints design gives the form flexibility to transform itself to suit different functions. For instance, the image (right 1) shows the modular cylinder laid and attached to form the seating for the couch.

The second approach is to

have control of the internal inflation depth in order to give different outcome. The image (right 4) shows that the internal PVC piece attached to the overall skin of the furniture and it varied in different depth.

The depth could give control over comfort, form and its function.

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ANDA Inflatable Chair / Tehila Guy material. PVC, Timber

There’s been a time or two that blowup furniture has hit the market with a bang but for the most part, you were hovering so close to the ground while you were sitting that it was impossible to get up. Now there’s Anda, a chair that takes inflatable furniture to the next level by actually being something you and your guests would want to sit on.

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projection.

The inspiration of this product is the combination of the inflatable product and structure elements.

This combination gives fresh look to the traditional inflatable furniture. Also, the idea of flat pack has inspired me along the way. The difficulty on making this product is that the seal of the PVC is industrial customized seal machine to achieve the level of detail.

The concept of the chair is similar to A.J.S modular design, connecting two inflation pieces with joints.

And the joints here is well designed and become the main feature of the whole furniture.

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Plopp Stool / Oskar Zieta material. Aluminium

Polish designer Oskar Zieta has designed a metal stool called Plopp for Danish furniture brand Hay. The stools are made from hydroformed metal; two sheets of metal are welded together following the outline of the stool, which is then filled with fluid under pressure.

The legs of the stool are then bent into place, creating a form that Zieta likens to inflatable furniture.

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projection.

The manufacture process of Plopp Stool is advanced to have the design produced precisely. It involved steel laser cutting, welding technique through robotic arms and hydro-form under high pressure. One of the interesting moment in this stool is the inflation folding. How the stool transform from two dimensional to three dimension is crucial to the design. Because of the shrinkage of the form through the inflation. The edge of the legs start to pull the force and geometry from the center. So the pulling force start to let the legs fold at the joints.

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Inflatable Stool and Side Table / Philipp Beisheim material. Silicon-based Fabric, Wood Structure Synthetic Rubber - Hypalon

German designer Philipp Beisheim has designed a stool and side table that you inflate with a hand pump like a rubber dinghy.

The side table features a wooden top supported by an inflatable base, while the stool has a blow-up seat resting on wooden legs.

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projection. the stool has a blow-up seat resting on wooden legs. The blow-up parts of the products are made from a durable synthetic rubber called Hypalon, commonly used to make inflatable boats. Similar to Anda’s Chair, the combination of the inflation and wood structure base through the joints. However, the inflation part itself does not support the whole weight. It would be challenging to create a piece that stand itself through two dimensional form finding.

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Blow Lamps / Theo Möl material. Aluminium coating PE tubes

Shown at Ventura Lambrate as part of Milan design week earlier this month, Theo Möller’s Blow lamps are inflated by blowing into a valve at one end of a polyethylene (PE) tube. The valve is forced closed by the air pressure inside the tube, creating an illuminated balloon.

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ller

projection.

Blow Lamps have initiated the idea combining the inflation and lighting. This project use inflation as a medium to float the light and use the lightness of the inflation to project the light, which gives the new aesthetics to any traditional lighting products. This brings the question to me how to use inflation in a different way to achieve different qualities.

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Balloon Inflated Seat / Seung Jin Ya

material. Balloon, Epoxy Res

The collection of chairs features backrests, legs and arms created using sausage-shaped inflated modelling balloons. Stools have seats made from a single balloon coiled around itself, and rest on gently curving legs. Although the furniture looks fragile, Yang used eight layers of epoxy resin to create a rigid outer surface.

Each piece needs around half a day to be coated in a single resin layer, with successive layers gradually added on top of it. As the resin sets it creates a glossy and solid surface, that’s able to support weight. The process takes a week to complete a single stool.

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ang

sin

projection.

This project gives another perspectives using inflations aesthetics. Taking inflation as a form and investing other method of harden/structural technique to make a piece of furniture.

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STOOL EXERCISE 1 Machine Experimentation 3D Print The exercise is a design esquisse. The stool exercises will explore processes of making, materiality and tooling. Introducing the use of equipment while exploring the relationship between the way things are made and the outcome that is produced.

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“Suple� 3D printed fixation system by gt2P

The precedent study leads to customized furniture joints that several dowels are connected with a single piece.

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The first prototype was purely playing with the joints. The prototype was using Makerbot Replicator+ to print the computer generated form. The leg cap was also customized to fit the angle that dowels to the ground.

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RELAXED JOINT GEOMETRY

FORM DEVELOPMENT

MOULD

STOOL 1 (REDUCTION JOINTS) 3D print Joints

Form Development

RELAXED JOINT GEOMETRY

MOULD

FORM DEVELOPMENT

RELAXED JOINT GEOMETRY

MOULD

Stool

The joint is the relax form resulted from kangaroo definition calculation. The dowel joints are the restraint points and relax to form an organic shape. The result is quite strong structurally as the printing density was set to 60%. It can take vertical loads from above, however because there is no horizontal reinforcement so the legs tend to go outward when seated.

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TING JOINTS) 3D PRINTED SCREWS FIXED TO SEAT & JNCTION

EXPLODED AXO JOINTS

ROTATING SEAT

3D PRINTED JUNCTION FIXED TO SEAT

SWIVEL JOINT BETWEEN 3D PRINTED JUNCTION & DOWEL

STOOL 2 (ROTATING JOINTS)

3D PRINTED SCREWS FIXED TO SEAT & JNCTION

EXPLODED AXO JOINTS

FIXED JOINT BETWEEN 3D PRINTED JUNCTION & DOWEL

ROTATING SEAT

3D PRINTED JUNCTION FIXED TO SEAT

SWIVEL JOINT BETWEEN 3D PRINTED JUNCTION & DOWEL

FIXED JOINT BETWEEN 3D PRINTED JUNCTION & DOWEL

3D PRINTED BASE FOR LEGS TO INSERT

3D PRINTED BASE FOR LEGS TO INSERT

Stool

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The second prototype pushes the idea of customized joints and amend the overall shape for human comfort and function. This version stool is slimmer than first prototype. All it has to change is the 3d print piece to form the furniture. The result would be more refine if we were to explore more about the locking joint and its mechanism. Also the proportion of the stool is quite odd because of its small top and large bottom. The rotation works fine however it does not rotate smoothly while lots of weights applies on the top. As the joints are relatively large size, it is structurally strong in terms of load bearing.

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STOOL 3 (INTERLOCKING JOINTS)

ROTATION DEVELOPMENT

JOINT INTERLOCKING

FINAL ROTATION CONCEPT

Stool

The another version is to utilize the rotation joint function to make a picnic stool. The three printed piece interlock with each other, at the same time, they have room to rotate by itself.

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TS)

ROTATION DEVELOPMENT

JOINT TO INSERT

JOINT INTERLOCKING LOCKING PIECES

JOINT TO HOST

FINAL ROTATION CONCEPT

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The detail of the printed quality varies. The smaller bits have lots of scrap to be removed. In terms of the structure, the stool holds the weight directly from the above while it is not sufficient to take the loads from the three joint points.

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reflection.

3D print technique has great advantage to do customized joints.

By controlling the density of the printed object, it can perform differently accordingly. The joint above was printed 60% and it could hold the human weight load from above. However, the cost and time has limited the prototypical process. The result would be better if we were to explore more about the interlock joints.

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STOOL EXERCISE 2 Material Experimentation 0.6mm Aluminium Sheet The exercise is a design esquisse. The stool exercises will explore processes of making, materiality and tooling. Introducing the use of equipment while exploring the relationship between the way things are made and the outcome that is produced.

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The precedents lead us to do the folding techniques as the main direction. Exploring the folding pattern while testing the structural capability and aesthetic outcomes.

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Panelling

The fabrication process of the 0.6 aluminum was using CNC machine to cut out the profile of the unfolded pattern and engrave at 0.3 mm depth to give the etches so that it can be folded into three dimensional object.

The first panelling design was using parametric tool to form different sizes and assemble toPanelling give steady structure form. The adjacent modular is connected though the joints. (bolt and nut) However, it is difficult to translate its language to large scale like a stool. It required large surface area to make it strong.

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Folding

Single Curvature

The second prototypes use dense etches to create a smooth folding curve. Borrowing the idea of Kerf, this test was to experiment creating curvature through the straight etch patterns.

The structure was good at vertical direction. However, it needs horizontal reinforcement to prevent the distortion of the legs.

Perforation

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The curve pattern was tested in this example. As shown, the object has natural curvature through the folding line. And the result is aesthetically good and structurally strong. So this intriguing feature was carried out through next prototypes.

Folding

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The curve pattern was tested in this example.

As shown, the object has natural curvature through the folding line. And the result is aesthetically good and structurally strong. So this intriguing feature was carried out through next prototypes.

Structural Curvature

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reflection.

The 6mm aluminium is the versatile material, easy to do different form through folding using CNC machine. The curvature was the main goal in experiment. However, when it scale up to furniture, it requires the capacity of structure. As shown, the folded piece and its curvature has shown some structural ability but still not able to take human weight.

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MATERIAL EXPERIMENTATION PVC Work Station Valve In this phase, we are to investigate the making of the inflation in terms of the material, sealing techniques, types of valves and work station setup. Through the experiment in different method and scale back and forth, it will be quicker to grasp the essence of inflations and limitations.

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Week 6

Work Station Set Up

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Cloth Iron

Aluminium Foil

Wax Paper

Cloth Iron could reach the temperature that melts the PVC so that the edge can be welded together.

Putting Aluminium Foil above the MDF base to prevent the iron heat transferring to the other area of the sheet.

Putting Wax Paper in between the sheet and iron to prevent the iron surface direct melting and burning the PVC sheet.

MDF

0.2mm PVC table cloth

0.2mm PVC Translucent Film

Flat base provides the flat work surface and prevent the overheating on wherever the surface you working on.

PVC table cloth is thermoformable and easy to buy from the retailers. Also, it has nice potential quality to a furniture piece.

A different material with different quality is worth trying at early stage.

The wax paper at top layer was to prevent the direct contact between iron and PVC. However the heat transfers down to melt the PVC to do sealing. The aluminium foil absorb the excessive heat to protect the workstation.

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Week 6

Sealing Techniques

apping Joint apping Joint apping Joint Overlapping Joint

Ea Ea Ea Easy, Quick Lots of Bubbles Lots of Bubbles Lots of Bubbles, Unclean Lots of Bubbles Seal, Weak

to Side Joint to Side Joint Side to Side Joint to Side Joint

Strong, Clean More to Set up

Strong, Clean

erge Joint erge Joint erge Joint

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Merge Joint

Longer Iron Time

Stro Stro Stro Mor Mor Mor

Stron Stron Stron Long Long Long

The sealing technique that was using is overlapping joint because it is easy to set up and quick to seal although it has unclean seal edge. It can quickly test the result from the 2D patterns.

Because it is using cloth iron as the heat sealing tool, it is hard to control and record the relation of the sealing time and temperature. So the quality of the sealing is inconsistent, which lead to the unexpected leaking from the edge.

The inspiration or the starting point of the experiment was from Oscar Zieta’s Plopp Chair where the two dimensional cutting patterns could be inflated into three dimensional forms.

The form exploration starts with simple pattern exploration to see how the material and form perform and interact.

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3D sealed joint The first tryout is to make a box. Although it is the simple form, its joint has very complicated relation. It requires accurate dimensional cut and precise sealing from the outside. And the most difficult was the last seal where it is impossible to seal without install a zipper or large valve to allow you to seal from inside. The most inflation furniture from market has precise machine in the factory.

It might not be ideal to work something out which is already sophisticated out there.

However, 2D seal flat sheet was much more achievable.

So, the direction from here was to explore and experiment the inflation through 2D seal joint.

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The strip is basic mattress form.

When air pressure is applied to max level, the space in between the sealed strips forms several air bags.

The second is the triangular, similarly to strips. It gives triangular air bags form.

Testing out different distance in between the strips will result different size of air bags. From here, the size or inflation height of the air bag depends on the closest sealed pattern.

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reflection.

From the first experiment, few testing allows me to grasp the basic aspects of the inflation.

1

The Sealing Technique.

2

Pattern.

3

Valves

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It is crucial for inflation furniture to have perfect seal around the edge. It has to be consistently sealed well because the air tends to go the weak points. And it would be the challenge posed by the human weight. It is not a structural joint but it creates the structure for inflation.

The pattern is secondary aspect for inflation in this case. The form of the final object will directly translate the 2 dimensional patterns.

At this stage, the experiment was quickly attached to the nozzle and inflated to test out the form of the object. But, the valves are also crucial to the inflation.

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Additional Precedent

Pneumatic Structure / Frei Otto Frei Otto (1925-2015) has extensive research on pneumatic structures. As shown, the soap bubble is bumped with air and starts to expand to form structural shape.

From here, it might be interesting to see how to create the bubble effect from two dimensional sheet.

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Inflated Stainless Steel / Stephen Newby

The intriging common thing of Stephen Newby’s work and my experiment is using 2D flat sheet object. However, the difference would be that steel itself is structural while PVC could not. On the other hand, however, the PVC has its flexibility to form more complex shape. How could this be pushed further, something that steel could not do?

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Week 7

Work Station Set Up

Heat Sealing Iron Small sealing area compared to cloth iron. Also, it is digital controlled temperature, which will keep sealing consistent.

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Wax Paper Putting Wax Paper in between the sheet and iron to prevent the iron surface direct melting and burning the PVC sheet.

MDF

0.2mm PVC table cloth

Flat base provides the flat work surface and prevent the overheating on wherever the surface you working on.

PVC table cloth is thermoformable and easy to buy from the retailers. Also, it has nice potential quality to a furniture piece.

0.2mm PVC Translucent Film A different material with different quality is worth trying at early stage.

Work Station Improvement

By Investing the hobby heat sealing iron, it allows me to have better sealing quality. Also, The iron is digitally controlled, so PVC 0.2mm table cloth needs to be heated up at 200 Degree Celsius and hold for 5 seconds. The result seal would be strong and durable.

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Following up Frei Otto’s precedents, two tests experiment the bubble effect. The left is simple sealed rectangular with a rubber band tieing the middle. So the two bubbles or air bags expand. The right one is having two circles intersecting where the middle is narrowed down. From the simple imagination, the result would have two large bubble and lower inflation height in the middle, which looks like some of the Frei Otto’s structure.

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Hinge Moment

However, unexpected moment is explored from the test shown on the left. The Frei Otto’s pneumatic structure was hemisphere from the ground while in my test, the inflation expands in both ways. Also, because of the narrowed air channel in the middle, the air was “jammed” in the space.

So from the image below, the object starts to fold up with an angle. The narrow air channel gives a hinge function into the form. It is that because one side is tending to squeeze and fold the PVC together where it gives the angle to it. This moment is quite similar to Oscar Zieta’s Plopp Stool’s Legs. The space in between legs and seat top has really narrow channel for the air, which results the automatic folding to it.

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From the hinge discovery, the pattern test is added small air channel in between the air bags. As shown, the air channel situated at four sides of the square air bags.

This is testing the folding of tubes, where its pattern has long strip seal to allow the space to form tubes and small channel for folding.

This tests the diagonal folding through triangles so the result would be the triangle air bags spiraling up to form a 3D shape tube. This is promising because it can extend itself to form unexpected 3D form.

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reflection.

The discover of the hinge inspirated me to integrate origami and inflation and allowed me to form 3D form through 2D flat sheet. The result is interesting and is able to be explored through the patterns, the shape of the airbags and the way of folding. So, the origami and infaltion had became the main direction from here. However, few issues need resolving at next stage:

1

Scale.

2

Valves.

The experiments I did here are no larger than a small pillow.

When it scale up, what is the efficient and alternative way to seal the material? How would it perform structurally in larger scale? Would current PVC hold up the loads? It is time to go back to basics to test the fundamental.

Valves were still the unresolved aspect. The idea is to purchase the quality valves that are already in use on the market.

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Week 8

Sealing Techniques

Heat

A new workstation setting up was used, sandwiching the two PVC sheet at the bottom and one MDF cut pattern on the top.

From the above, the heat was applied to allow the PVC to be sealed.

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Heat Gun

MDF template

To give the heat from the above, the heat gun is required.

The cutoff MDF piece with template pattern gives accurate sealing location.

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issues.

When it was scaled up, it immediately revealed several critical issues:

1

Materials.

2

Heat gun on MDF

3

Valves

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When the load was applied to three tests. They all have severe issue of leaking because of the busted holes. The size of air bags and the material itself has to be reconsidered.

When the heat is applied from above, the MDF is too thin to prevent heat spreading to other areas. So the cutting pattern was no longer accurate, some of the areas was accidentally sealed because of the heat.

At this stage, the pool toy offcut valves were used in the three test. Because of the reusing, the seal is difficult to suit into the new material, which creates the leaks through valves as well.

material testing.

The urgent task here is to test out what material, heat sealing workstation and techniques were required to make 1:1 scale inflation.

So the options or variable aspects are (1) PVC thickness, 0.2mm, 0.5mm (2) sealing time (3) thickness of the plywood: 12mm, 18mm (4) sealing temperature.

Temp 400 °C

Temp 500 °C

8 seconds

3 seconds

PVC-0.2mm on 18mm Ply

6 seconds

4 seconds

PVC-0.5mm on 12mm Ply

15 seconds

10 seconds

PVC-0.5mm on 18mm Ply

13 seconds

10 seconds

PVC-0.2mm on 12mm Ply

Temp 600 °C

2 seconds

8 seconds

The shorter heating time, the less containment area.

The higher sealing temperature, the stronger bond.

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Week 9

first structural prototype.

After adjusting and exploring different parameters that control the sealing quality, the first structurally successful prototype was produced through simple pillow form. Although the valve has minor leaking because of its quality, the overall performance was surprisingly good. At this point, the feasibility of the project has been proven in terms of the sealing techniques and its structural performance.

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As

shown,

it

has

successfully hold up human weight from above, even standing.

From here, it was the time to embed previous tessellation experiment into this new recipe. Will the inflation still have the same structural ability when it changes to different airbags sizes and shapes? Is it possible to create interesting 3D form through 2D pattern and it still has the structural function to it?

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folded pillow.

The first prototype was to test the folding moment into new sealing method. The inflation naturally folded 90 degree and created interesting seating form.

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hinge pattern.

The second prototype was to integrate the hinge idea into the larger scale. The image shown above is 18mm plywood, cut off the location where the PVC needs sealing from above. And the location of the sealing patterns are exactly where the edges are. So from the patterns, we could see the result would be a cube.

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This prototype results was very neat. It has clear definition of inflation air bags, hinges, the pattern of the sealing and the valves. From the image from left, it whole cube would be able to be deflated and folded into flat sheet. So, it has triggered some of direction where the furniture could be turned into flat sheet and pack n go. The valve detail here was outsourced from Kite Repair shop. The glue or tape was specialised to plastic and the seal is perfect in this case.

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tessellation pattern.

The second direction was to test the previous tessellation patterns into larger scale, testing

the structural ability and form finding through the process. The pattern here was the triangular modular air bags. The advantage of tessellation pattern, different from the hinge pattern, is that it can easily form the interesting three dimensional form through binding, twisting and folding.

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However, the down side of this is that it generally created smaller airbags, which gives less structural ability as a whole. As imagined, the small airbags are easier to be busted.

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reflection.

There were two options or directions to head to for the next stage, hinge and tessellation patterns. The hinge pattern was neat and simple, flat pack sheet inflating into 3D forms. The tessellation pattern has lots of potential in terms of the forms. Considered the time where the inflation does not need much to produce, it was the time to have more explorations.

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origami tessellation pattern.

This pattern was borrowed from the origami patterns.

The folding line is where the seal is. The ideal result is to have the triangular air bags inflated and still have the distinct boundary in between the air bags, so the overall will be looking like inflated paper origami.

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issues.

First of all, because of the numbers of the sealing joints, it was really easy to get out of control of the sealing qualities. There were lots of waste material (failed version) and re-seal process. Secondly, the direct borrowing from origami pattern seems problematic. The pattern itself should be tested at smaller density first to test how the inflation performs, which leads to the performance of the triangular air bags. At last, structural speaking, it could not take much loads.

And small air bags were easy to be busted. direction change.

From here, the time is tight and the final is approaching. So I had decided to go with simple hinge patterns to come out a furniture design and resolve nicely with details.

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PROTOTYPE Form

In this phase, the decision is made to design a furniture piece based on the research and experiment from previous stages.

The process of prototype was from sketch, form to detail. The process sometimes went back and forth to improve the design.

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design sketch.

The design idea was to make a low lounge that is usually used outdoor for cinema, for instance. It meant to be easy to assemble, come with flat pack and nice detail resolution to it. So the initial sketch shows the 4 different sizes airbags folded with angle to form a lounge. The first detail will be situated at two ends where they prevent the couch flattening. The second detail solution is to use straps underneath to have the same purpose.

First of all, the sketch needs resolving accurate angle, proportion, human comfort before going to detail.

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form.

By looking at Le Corb’s Chaise Lounge and measure the dimension from 3D model, the prototype was borrowed and adjusted through its dimension. From the initial sketch, the angle is low to the ground. The angle of calf/thigh was adjusted accordingly.

One potential weakness was that there was no support or stop from the two sides, which the furniture would be going left and right.

800 500

500 117 °

cutting profile

100 °

650

120 °

prototype form

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prototype 1 reflection.

After getting the sealing pattern (shown right), the first 1:2 prototype was made(shown below). The purpose of the prototype was to see how it performs structurally, in order to figure out the details. The result was not what I expected. The form is complex because of the numbers of air bags. The hinge language was lost because of it.

One of reasons might be its scale, not at 1:1. However, There would be some adjustment on forms and sealing pattern shape at hinge joints.

sealing pattern

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Surprisingly, from last prototype, some interesting moment happen when the lounge was folding together to form almost like a mini sofa.

The folding geometry was compacted and transparency of PVC started to reveal the interesting moment inside, which drives people to look inside and figuring out.

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prototype 2 reflection.

Although the seal pattern could help the angle of folding and inflation, the outcome was still messy joint and the hinge language was lost. Looking back to previous testings, I think it needed to be back to simpler seal joint like the Cube one (P. 65)

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In terms of the proportion, because of the shrinkage of air bags, the dimension of the 2D sheet will reduce 50mm perside, 100mm in total.

Thus, the seat size was shrunk to 280mm.

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The first 1:1 prototype is shown here, changing from lounge to mini sofa. The sealing pattern was evolved from strips to small pockets in order to let the air penetrate the air bags more easily.

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On the right, the curve profile at both side of the joints removed the funny kink because of the folding. The language of the folding was more clarified.

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be entirely sealed for detail fittings. The results of the prototype was much clean.

And the proportion of the seating was reasonable. However, the back of the seat was a little short. The folding edges were still having some room to improve.

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The third prototype went back to simple seal patterns. And the “wing� part would

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prototype 3

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revised prototype 3

folding moment

The form was almost finalized, in terms of the proportion, dimension and angles. The next part is crucial part for this furniture, details.

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DETAIL tension

In this phase, the work focus on the resolution on the tension joint between the back seat and seat itself. The quality of the detail affects the overall sense and quality of the inflation. It is the part that could elevate the inflation into good design.

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details.

The details are crucial parts for this design, which elevates everything to another level. The details focus on the tension between the seat and its back.

So it has to be something that pull them together through a medium.

The image above shown is one of the options, zipper. Because stitching on PVC is difficult especially at the 1mm thickness. So I decided to use heavy double side tape. The result works fine but it was not looking fine at all. The tape was too obvious, and zipper could not perfectly lie on the PVC. Most importantly, it was weak.

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After testing out zipper, hook and loop strap and buckle strap, the magic strap was too weak to hold human weight. The strap was difficult to fix on the inflation. So I started to look at eyelet and its joints. One of the inspiration was the shoe lace. The eyelet was 5mm diameters and the rope was prestretched rope.

The result was not good because when the tension started to load on the eyelets. The PVC started to curve outwards at the same time. So the result geometry was twisted and does not look fine.

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reflection.

The form and proportion was almost finalised. Only minor adjustment is needed for next prototype. One of the adjustment would be the back of the seat needs to be longer to fit the comfort of the user’s back. And the whole thing needs to be a little higher, which is about 500-600 mm high.

More importantly, the joints need to be refined. As shown on previous page, the eyelet fitting starts to work. It is good transition fitting between PVC and other external fittings. However, the triangle wing at the both side seems too big and does not do anything structurally. So, the tension solution might need to be more simple and direct.

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The joints are basically eyelets with a connect fittings (hook or clip) tied to marine quality ropes.

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From testing, the rectangular had potentially became the weak spot that could be busted and leak the air out. So the correction was to minimized the rectangular area to make it strong.

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This prototype finalize the form design and focus on detail joint design. The joint seal pattern had changed from wings to rectangular at both sides. The rectangles are entirely sealed. The eyelets would be located at both end of the rectangles.

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reflection.

The detail was refined but not to the level that it will help elevate the whole design. The rope was the downside of the detail. The type of the rope, the type of the knot on the rope needed to be refined for the next. Also introducing new material such as leather would be a good testing. Also, the idea of the cleat joint would also be testing in the next detail.

cleat

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detail 1.

In order to elevate the design, the detail of the joint has to reach certain quality that users would feel and touch so that the users actually feel the design and the consideration of the details.

The first detail was to use cleat idea. The wooden dowel (12mm) was drilled a 6mm holes to let the rope go through. The result was a little awkward because of the mix material of brass, leather, rope and wood. It might be too much going on for the details.

The detail has to elevate the inflation instead of taking over the main design.

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detail 2.

The second detail focuses on the combination of wood, leather and rope. The rope goes through the holes on leather. However, the result was not pleasant where it lacks of some nice fittings to finish or elevate the leather. The leather itself looks like a loose unresolved piece tieing with the rope.

Also, the rope and wood was not quite working well with the inflation. The inflation was flexible and self-formed piece. I wanted the detail to be more rigid, strong to give certain contrast to the inflation.

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detail 3.

The third detail focuses on the combination of brass and leather.

The brass eyelet, rivets and hooks tie with 20mm wide leather strap.

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The result was better than previous two. It looks more refined and neat.

However, as a whole, the combination of detail and inflation was a little odd.

The inflation is light, modern sort of tone. The detail strap was a little heavy, dark and old fashion. So, it would be worth trying some solution that is casual, and light.

detail 4.

The forth detail was choosing the light blue color leather to match the light color of inflation PVC. The lightness of the color has better connection with the inflation than the dark brown leather. The result was definitely better but not perfect. I still doubt the combination of leather, brass and PVC. The inflation has its playful character where the leather and brass give the seriousness in it. It was still not sure if it was the best way. Maybe cotton polyester web strap with the plastic fittings? in more casual way?

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leather work tools

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inflation work tools

reflection.

Because of the time frame, the detail joint resolution could have more tests. The final solution was fine but not perfect as a whole. The next try on the detail if I have time later on would be using fabric cotton web strap and learning sewing to make a strap with the plastic fittings. It might be giving more casual, playful flexbable appearance and characters into the piece.

The detail process has benefited on the form design as well. The feedback loop between form and detail works really well and was really interesting to use this dynamic to drive the design. Also, through the detail, I have understood more about infaltion design itself such as its characters and essence.

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FINAL DESIGN Pneu-Fold

103

104

Airbag Joints

Sealed Hinge

Sealed Hinge

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106

Package

107

Seat + Base

108

Back + Seat

109

110

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Ex-Lab: Digital Design Fabrication Felix Yanjie Zhan