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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 three primary precedents: a spiderwed, the Hoberman Sphere, and the Papasan Chair. The Hoberman sphere is a popular kids toy that expands to three times it's size and the Papasan Chair is a comfortable spherical chair. We began our process by examining different mechanisms for an expanding and contracting chair.
Iteration One
Our first iteration began with an inner and outer ring that were connected with stretchy string. We've been inspired throughout this process by that design because it had an elegant look to it. However, because it was essentially just one ring suspended in air, it wasn't a plausible design. Therefore, we have used that idea and tried to create something that looked like that but actually worked.
Iteration Two
Our second iteration is when we worked the design of the Hoberman Sphere into our chair. We used the ring of the Hoberman sphere as the outside of our chair and connect that to a stationary base. The initial connection pieces where two pieces of wood with a joint. These connection mechanisms didn't allow for the proper rotation of the sphere so we needed to create another kind of mechanism that accounted for that. We tried added three other joints to the connections but that still didn't account for the geometry of the ring.
Iteration Three
The third iteration included the rings of the Hoberman Sphere as our attachment mechanisms. We attached that all to a small stationary base. This was the closest interation we came to it acting like a chair.
Iteration Four
In our fourth iteration we scaled our model up so that it came closer to the size of a chair. We also cut holes in our pieces so we could attach string throughout the model to simulate the seat of a chair. This model was pretty successful. However, we were not able to design rivets that were successful enough to create the legs of the chair.
Rivets
Throughout this process we went through eighteen iterations of rivets. These rivets were were we used as connecting joints for the Hoberman pieces. We encountered many issues with our rivets because they would expand when we printed out many of them at a time. Also, some were too weak. We also printed them on the Form II printer. This printer was good because it didn't allow any expansion. However, the resin material was too strong for a rivet.
Introduce the general context of your project
Present the thesis or design problem and how you approached the solution
Using precedents, begin to tell the story of the genesis of your actual design.
Describe the overall design concept.
Delve deeply into the heart of the design process through a description of major design iterations.
Thoroughly describe the final design technically and functionally through the reference to your diagrams.
Walk through the final images, discussing how everything came together.
Discuss the conceptual and technical challenges you faced. These should be broad view issues, not hyper-specific technical issues.
Your vision for where your project can go.