Crate Chair: The Final Product

In March I wrote about the Crate Chair I was designing: "We just started working in sculpture class on our final projects made of wood. I've always wanted to make a chair and I thought this would be a great opportunity to do it. Objects that have more than one use pique my interest so I'm making a chair that has more than one function. In short, it's a storage container that transforms between a chair and a small table.

My obsession with squares and cubes led me to doodle a crate that opens up into a chair. I researched simple crate designs and recreated them in 3D. Once I had all the pieces together I began figuring out how I could manipulate them in order for it to open."

Closed Crate Chair. AKA small table mode.

Open Crate Chair with the closed phase on the right.

Image from my progress update in March.

I have good news and bad news. Since I can't ask you which you want to hear first, I'll start with the bad news: I lost the Crate Chair. The good news is that I finished and took pictures before I lost it. Let me explain.

The chair was actually in a sculpture show here at SVA despite the fact that it's more aptly categorized as industrial design than sculpture. Clay heads bursting with all sorts of oddities and plaster freakiness filled the room that my chair sat in. When people reached it after walking around they usually seemed a little confused as to why it was even there. (I confess, I stood in the corner and watched. Wouldn't you?) Because it was different, however, it garnered more attention that it would've in a room full of chairs.

So how did I lose it? In a nutshell, I didn't pick it up after the exhibition ended and the clean-up crew threw it out. Am I sad? A bit, but I what's done is done and the real fun was the designing and building of the chair, not the staring at it.

Unfortunately, because of my blunder, the only pictures I have are cell phone pictures.

The chair just after I finished it. Closed up and ready to go.

At the exhibition.

Open in all its glory. The seat lifts for storage underneath.

For scale, the chair in the wood shop.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the pictures! If you ever come across my missing chair tell it I said hello.