FURNITURE DESIGN, CONCEPT

REPRIEVAL

An exploration of psychedelia and self.

PROBLEM:

The brief was personal rather than commercial: make an object that embodies liberation from societal and self-imposed constraint. That's an idea with no obvious physical form, and a chair is an awkward vessel for it — furniture is fundamentally about support and containment, which is closer to the opposite of what the piece needed to say. It had to communicate captivity and release at the same time, in a single static object, without narration.

APPROACH:

I built the form from a single ombré glass plane. Glass carries the contradiction the idea required — it reads as immaterial and nearly absent, yet it's structurally resilient, which mirrors how past experience is both invisible and load-bearing. The silhouette moves from a dark, constricted base to a lighter, expansive top, so the eye travels the arc from captive to free. Constriction and release do the structural work; the color shift does the narrative work.

OUTCOME:

Gold, Graphis New Talent Annual 2020.

SCHOOL:    The Portfolio Center 

TEACHER:   Hank Richardson