This chair was built with Kelsey Dawson as an elective in our final term of undergrad. The chair is made from aluminum, plywood, fabric and leather, and is designed to be sturdy yet portable. It folds closed for easier carrying, has a built in cushion on the head bar, and has a built in pocket in the bottom web for storing notebooks and supplies.

The majority of the structure was cut out on a CNC router from baltic birch plywood. They were finished with a manual router to create the roundovers on the edge, to soften the form and prevent tearout at the edges of the ply. The aluminum tubes that form the cross members have plywood doughnuts and/or pucks epoxy adhered to them to form stops for the folding portions of the chair, and provide spots for the screws to pull into. The aluminum was also lightly sanded to remove the extrusion finish and create a better surface for adhesion. After everything was adhered, the plywood was treated with a danish oil to bring out the grain and seal the wood.

At the same time, the seat and bottom web were sewn together, with an integral pillow added to cushion the sitter’s head from the upper aluminum bar. The fabric was fit over the cross members, then the screws were installed to attach the side pieces, and the chair was finished!