The Nest
Year: 2021
Type: Physical Chair
Materials: Cardboard, packing tape, duct tape, cotton, wool, felt.
A large, colourful, egg-shaped chair filled with pillows and blankets. This was a project for an Art class called "Storytelling in Design." It’s inspired by a personal story about a significant chair from my youth.
My role: Designer, builder
Time took to create: 1 month
Creation Process
Criteria: Build a full-sized, half-sized, or quarter-sized chair based on a personal story that includes a chair.
Ideation
I thought of a chair that was important to me and wrote my story on it: a rocking chair I had as a child. Using my story, I made some initial design sketches and mood boards for it using references for structure concepts, decorations, and colours.
 |  |  |
|---|
Prototyping
I made some miniature prototypes based on my sketches and mood board to figure out how to build the full-sized chair. I made a few versions using different techniques until I settled on bending strips into overlapping circles to be the best method for this project.
 |  |
|---|
Building
The last two weeks were spent cutting cardboard into strips and bending and taping them together into a frame. Once the frame was built, I started preparing the interior decorations. I picked out a bed sheet and pillows to use as seating, another pillow for aesthetics, sewed and stuffed the other pillow (the light blue one), and knit the wool blanket on top. I reinforced the frame for the bedding and put all the bedding inside. Then I made some final external decorations with coloured tape and adjusted the interior bedding. Once the chair was completed, I took to it a studio for a photoshoot.
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Afterthoughts
This was a long process. It was too big and too heavy to work, and the shape made it hard to hold together, especially the initial frame. I ended up restarting it once because the first frame collapsed. From the start, I made this project excessively overambitious with its size and shape, but I was committed to finishing it as planned. It took a lot of creativity and long hours into the night, but it got finished. Despite all the troubles with it, it was incredibly fun to create, and I am beyond happy with it.
What I Learned
Using storytelling in design
The complete design process from ideation to construction and completion
Planning for practicality in construction
Engineering a chair to be structurally sound