Dutch design brand Moooi has partnered with Argentinian 3D artist Andrés Reisinger to mass-produce his Hortensia chair, also known as “the chair that could not be made”.

Back in 2018, Reisinger designed the chair as a ‘digital’ piece of furniture, but it has now been made into a physical chair covered in 30,000 fabric petals, available in the original pink as well as grey. This chair is said to be the first time that a product designed for the digital world has gone into mass production. The updated version being released by Moooi features a steel frame, rather than wood, covered in injection-moulded foam, while using lightweight polyester fabric laser-cut into long, scalloped strips that are then bunched together into clusters of 40 petals each. Moooi used special sewing machines to sew the petal modules onto a thick, elastic backing textile that is then wrapped around the chair.

“The Hortensia was considered impossible to produce – and yet here we are,” said Moooi CEO Robin Bevers.

(Link and image: dezeen.com)

For those of us who can’t still still, imagine sitting or moving around in your chair and charging your mobile phone at the same time. Thanks to Dutch designer Nathalie Teugels, you’ll be able to do just that: her chair called MOOV has 288 piezoelectric crystals under the seat cushion that produces electricity when it’s compressed.

Teugels was told way too often to ‘sit still’ and instead of catering to that, she decided to design something that would embrace the fidgeting, especially people with ADD. In fact, sitting upright in the chair can charge it up as well, so it’s a win-win for anyone sitting down. The chair is currently a working prototype, so we’ll have to sit tight for a while until we can get one.

If someone could do that with the utterly useless and annoying habit of pen clicking, I’d be a tad less misophonic. I actually carry pens around to switch them out to people who click them.

NTEUGELS PRESENTS MOOV from RAHVICE on Vimeo.

(Links: mentalfloss.com, photo: nteugels.tumblr.com)

Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Govert Flint has designed a chair that allows users to control the cursor with a range of body movements. He designed this dynamic chair so one could move in all directions, and worked with programmer Sami Sabik to translate the motions of users into on-screen actions.

“I started to think about how we make chairs that are disconnected from their activity. Working in the office is an activity we sit for. From then on I tried to design a chair based on body movements.”

Three accelerometers positioned around the chair measure movement in X, Y and Z directions. Collected data is then transferred along wires to a computer, which is programmed to use the information to move a cursor around a computer screen positioned at a user’s eye level. One sensor located below the seat calculates the chair position relative to the X and Y planes. The user’s shifts forward, backward and side to side move the cursor in corresponding directions on the screen

The dynamic and chair and much more will be on display during the
Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven from 18 to 25 October.

(Link: www.dezeen.com, Photo www.lisaklappe.com)