How might we make temporary furniture more sustainable?

The Origami Chair was inspired by a lack of sustainable temporary products. In an era of plastic forks and injection molded lawn chairs, we often settle for what’s convenient and cheap at the expense of sustainability. This chair is designed in a way that it can be folded from one sheet of cardboard or chipboard. This chair can also be unfolded into a flat rectangle for easier and more efficient shipping or storage in small spaces.

Dimensions: 34"x22"x22" when assembled, 40"x22"x1" when folded flat for storage

The Origami Chair is meant to be created from a large sheet of chipboard or cardboard. However, while these materials are sustainable, they are often perceived as flimsy. To counter this commonly held misconception, I designed my chair to occupy a lot of volume and not have any of the negative space that typical wooden chairs have underneath the seat. 

These initial concept sketches show my exploration of different geometric configurations for the seat. I eventually chose sketch B and used Solidworks to CAD a digital model to get a better idea of the measurement ratios.

I had to test many different angles and degrees of concavity for the chair in order to find a configuration that offered both sitting comfort and also structural integrity. Prototypes with more severely concave seats would shear and tear at the corners of the overall cubic structure. To rapidly prototype many different variations of the same design, I created a vector drawing of the flattened chair, then laser cut many copies (tweaking angles and slopes in between each laser cut prototype). 

Low fidelity prototypes to explore and understand possible folding patterns.

Prototyping such a large project required testing many assumptions of geometry and also material. From left to right, my prototyping stages are explained:

A) Testing if folding paper along a curve can create a stronger 3D object than just a straight fold.

B) Applying the folding technique to the vertex where 3 faces intersect to create a 3D negative space.

C) Testing one configuration for the chair. In this model there are not enough vertical faces to bear a downward load of a seated person.

D) Testing another configuration of the chair. The downward load issue is resolved in this model, but the concavity looks uncomfortable for seating.

E) Resolved the concavity concern of prototype stage D by testing more curved fold contours. Also realized this prototype in light weight chipboard to simulate the effect of bending chipboard at larger scales.

This 30 second video shows how the chair is assembled from the flat storage/shipping configuration. 

The final chair was constructed from sheets of 5-ply chipboard and assembled by duct-taping each sheet together. The duct-tape along each fold and curved contour created a sort of "living hinge" in the sheet of material where the folds of the chair occur. I covered the outside of the chair with butcher paper to give the final prototype a more finished look.

The Origami Chair has a wide seat and back, allowing it to be a comfortable lounge chair for reading, relaxing, or meeting in group settings. The design intent is for this origami chair to be used in temporary spaces (such as rental spaces).  

Designed and built by Annie Zhang