my first steps...

Okay so lets kick this off, my love for design started when I went to secondary school, art and design technology were by far my favourite lessons, this carried on throughout my years at Gleed Girls Technology College, Spalding. Within my GCSE's I took product design as an option, I loved the freedom this subject offered compared to projects we did in lower school, I could decide my target market, the problem, the brief, it seemed like it was professional, like I was a real life designer. From this project I found a trend which would carry my through my a-levels and towards my degree, my love for the natural form, nature is one of the biggest design influences for me as you will see through my current work. From constantly drawing different flower shapes I then started to integrate them with furniture forms, my conclusion being a chair.

My GCSE piece is my favourite piece so far, it made me realise that this is what I want to do in the future, focusing on designing furniture, one-offs like this piece and also mass produced like my university pieces. For this piece i made the brief to be for young teenage girls who had a problem for seating space when friends came over to visit them (a problem which I personally had at the time), with a location specifically in the bedroom, it needed to be versatile for different sized rooms, somehow the seating needed to be hidden away when not in use.

This is my Flower Chair, it is a freestanding piece that offers seating for up to five people when fully unfolded, the main form is a central circular chair with a petal shaped backrest, along the bottom of the main seat there are four petal shaped seats fixed via hinges that stay in the confined space hanging down vertically when not in use. When extra seating is needed supports from underneath the chair also swing out via hinges and slot into the bottoms of each of the four petal seating platforms. The chair is made fully out of plywood along with shaped foam cushions and flower patterned cushion covers.