Tag: Seats

Plug & Plop: Urban Add-Ons Turn Street-Side Bollards into Seats & Tables

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

Designed to act as barriers, bollards are a common sight in cities around the world — but what if they could engage rather than just separate?

This series of simple additions from Teratoma dubbed PLUG A SEAT aim to transform (or at least extend) the function of the bollard, converting rows of columns into arrays of seating and table space.

The lacquered aluminum surfaces add a bit of color along with functionality, and have a variety of potential applications — they could be affixed permanently, or added temporarily by individuals eating lunch downtown, or deployed during street festivals.

These extenders can also be sized to fit different dimensions of bollard for different metropolitan areas (though one might hope that a future iteration could be able to expand and contract on demand).

In the grander scheme, these kinds of simple guerrilla furniture designs highlight potential new uses for old extant infrastructure. And who knows: maybe bollards will start to lose their original function as self-driving cars take to the streets, but instead of being removed could find second lives serving other purposes.

Bottoms Up: 20 Creative & Strange Modern Stool Designs

Welcome. Pull up a chair – or better still, its more portable sibling, the stool. They’re handy things to have around the home, minimalist and clean-lined (and the ideal impromptu laptop table). …

Modular Urbanism: Coin-Operated System of Portable Street Furniture

Much like coin-based cart systems found in supermarkets and airports, these stackable stools (which double as table surfaces) can be borrowed, moved around and returned with ease. Unlike …

Shelve It! 15 More Creative & Unique Bookcases & Bookshelves

(Check out our complete collection of Unusual, Creative and Transforming Furniture.)

Lacking some library space in your crowded house or apartment? Our original 20 distinctive ways and places …

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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WebUrbanist

August 6, 2017
Cheap Seats: Sculptural Furniture Showroom Facade Made of 900 Black Chairs

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

Using cheap and repetitive materials sounds like a recipe for kitsch, but this furniture-oriented facade clad in generic black chairs (at around $ 5.00 USD a piece) manages to pull off an elegant and refined look.

The clients, MY DVA (a furniture company), were looking for something additive, layered onto the existing bland building, but also reflecting their function (to showcase office and school furniture). The ideal solution would promote their wares while also entertaining visitors. It also had to be inexpensive.

Versed in product and urban design, Ondrej Chybik and Michal Kristof of studio CHYBIK+KRISTOF, took these concerns into account when designing the facade. Tapping into their respective backgrounds, they came up with cladding literally composed of product designs that also fits a neighborhood theme of repetition (filled with identical blocks of flats).

In total, the team used 900 Vicenza seats, a regular offering of the company, to form an undulating black box around the showroom, which functions well with the reduced light provided by these exterior shading elements.

Inside, the space was pared down to expose a raw concrete ceiling, from which suspended curtains hang to create little galleries — adjustable lights in these zones simulate different lighting conditions for furniture client spaces.

Staff offices are located along the edges, off to the sides and out of the way behind translucent partitions, leaving a large, open, blank-slate showroom for furniture buyers.

Augmented Showroom: Projections Compliment Physical Products

Offering more than a traditional storefront space or conventional shopping website could individually, this hybrid showroom allows shoppers to experiment with different combinations of …

Kinetic Facade: Awesome Adaptive Window Shading System

Buildings are forever in tension, being static objects in a dynamic world – light conditions in particular shift predictably yet variably throughout the day, week, season and year, in turn …

Chairs from Nowhere: Secret Table & Seats Hide in Shelves

Four chairs, one table, and they take up almost no space when not in use – yet not folding, flipping, stacking or complex mechanical maneuvers are needed to make it happen.

With very …

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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WebUrbanist

July 19, 2017
Bottomless Anti-Chair: Crafty Bentwood Form Frames Other Seats

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

As it stands, you can do just about anything with this Arm Chair except actually sit in it, at least until you add your own chair, stool or other form of seating to the mix.

Part artist statement, part conceptual and part physical framework, this absurdist anti-chair by Clark Bardsley is also a cunning and well-crafted exercise in traditional wood bending and shaping techniques.

The steam bent, brush back sanded and oiled American Oak object represents an impressive execution of a notoriously difficult process made all the more complex within a seat and back to tie the piece together.

The Auckland-based designer focused on materials and methods in this work, but while he may have failed to include that essential ingredient, which most would associate with chair-ness, the void he left also lets users fill empty space with other sorts of seats.

Office chairs on casters, plastic bucket chairs, metal stools … pretty much anything can be slotted into place as desired. At the same time, the wood frame gives the piece a recognizable outline and sense of comfortable familiarity.

As the artist puts it, “we structured our research around creating a beautifully finished object that pays heed to a classic bentwood chair, without posing it as a commercial product. Why shouldn’t research have a sense of humor?”

In a world where it seems like every type of chair possible has been designed (if not built), perhaps it is indeed time to make one simply with the goal of getting a good laugh.

Neat Seats: 14 Crazy Creative Modern Chair Designs …
Self Snuggling: 7 Super-Cozy Full Body-Wrapping Seats …
Neglected Riverside Steps Revived with Form-Fitting Sunbed Seats …

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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WebUrbanist

June 24, 2016
Neglected Riverside Steps Revived with Form-Fitting Sunbed Seats

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Designed to help citizens of Wroclaw, Poland, reclaim neglected parts of their city this site-specific “microinstallation” provides comfortable urban furniture for an otherwise hard-to-occupy staircase.

Developed by No Studio for DoFA (AKA the Lowersilesian Festival of Architecture), padded bed-chair combinations made for sitting and lounging were placed along public steps near an historic bridge.

The normal stairs are not only made of uncomfortable concrete, but they are spaced for walking, not sitting, making it uncomfortable to spend time in any position other than standing at and leaning against the riverside railing.

Visitors, who would normally pass by with few excuses to stop, were suddenly encouraged to have a seat in the sun, all thanks to rather simple but fit-for-function works of urban seating.

Part practical project, the endeavor also reflects an subtle thesis: small and low-cost moves can radically transform our experience of public open spaces.

No Studio aims to turn temporary changes into memorable experiences and lasting inspiration: “We create spaces, design for a while and a little longer. We have fun working on serious things. We try to solve problems rather than create monuments.”

Street Seats for the People: Bold Guerrilla Furniture …
City Seats: 14 Examples of Unconventional Urban Furniture …
Abandoned Bridge Amphitheater Reclaims Urban Space …

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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WebUrbanist

June 22, 2016
Neat Seats: 14 Crazy Creative Modern Chair Designs

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

More than just a surface to sit on, these modern chair designs are (sometimes literally) works of art, sculptural yet functional, from a flat-looking canvas you can actually sit on to a series of chairs that slide inside each other, inception-style. Customize a chair’s look with removable graphic panels, hook two high-backed seats together to make a room-within-a-room, or scare your guests with hanging chairs that mimic beasts of the deep sea.

Monster Chairs Might Eat You

Rest inside the mouth of a sea beast, real or mythical, in this series of fun and frightening handmade chairs by Cape Town artist Porky Hefer.

A Painting You Can Sit In

Hung flat on a wall, these canvases look like nothing more than two-dimensional paintings. But pull them down, lean them against the wall and take a seat, and you’ll find that they are surprisingly up to the task. These lightweight furniture pieces by YOY design studio are made of wood, aluminum and stretched elastic canvas.

Home Office in a Chair

If you’re the type who works from home but isn’t into sitting at a conventional desk, the Four Works Armchair can meet all of your needs. A seat is embedded within a bookcase-like base that also offers a light, cupholder, power outlets, storage and a laptop platform.

Inception Chair

Ten interlocking chairs ranging from adult to child size fit within a single frame in this chair by Vivian Chiu, inspired by the dream-within-a-dream concept of the movie Inception.

Rhinoceros Beetle Chair

Adding to a collection of realistic animal-shaped chairs rendered in matte black, Maximo Riera presents The Beetle Chair, which is only recognizable as furniture when viewed from the back.

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Neat Seats 14 Crazy Creative Modern Chair Designs

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[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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WebUrbanist

December 29, 2015
Self Snuggling: 7 Super-Cozy Full Body-Wrapping Seats

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

Forget your chair-and-blank combination – with these ultra-warm wonders of domestic design, curling up with a good book has never seemed more enticing.

Speaking of chairs and blankets, Aga Brzostek (well familiar with winter cold in Poland) starts off this series with her combined vision of both items in one. Sitters and sleepers alike can curl themselves up into a warm integrated sweater. It also comes complete with a pocket for storing your favorite book or magazine.

An even more relaxing experience beckons for those prone to falling asleep in their favorite chair. Les M presents a hybrid sleeping bag seat that zips up around you. Its white inside shows up bright when open, and exterior turns it dark when (en)closed.

When things warm up a bit, but sitting fully outside still is not an appealing option, consider the suspended Nest Rest. This wicker-woven retreat can be hung from trees or set on the ground – either way, it comes with a comfortable pad and can be stuffed with pillows for snuggling (oneself or otherwise).

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Self Snuggling 7 Super Cozy Full Body Wrapping Seats

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March 19, 2013