Final (Brief)

Max Ingersoll and Nina Cragg

People who live in smaller spaces can find it challenging to find room for furniture for themselves and for their pets. In addition to that, there are not many pieces of furniture that are versatile enough to be used for either people or animals. The Transforming Chair is a versatile piece of furniture that provides an elegant solution to this problem by morphing between two states: a papasan chair for humans and a dog bed for dogs.


The Transforming Chair was inspired by a combination of the Hoberman Sphere and the Papasan Chair. The Hoberman Sphere is a toy ball that can expand to three times it's size and the Papasan chair is a comfortable bowl shaped chair. The Transforming chair expands and contracts using the mechanism popularized in the Hoberman’s Sphere. This  allows the chair to expand, from a small chair, for the pet, into a papasan chair, for the human. This also saves space in the homes of users, as the chair can be stored in the smaller phase.

The chair will be comprised of an outer expanding ring conntected to four expanding half rings that attach to a stationary base. When completely contracted a pillow can be placed on the contracted chair for a dog to sit on. When expanded it will be a Papasan chair for people to sit on.