The Relationship Attachment Chair is a visual metaphor for relationships brought to life in a literal and interchangeable chair or sofa form. The challenge was translating my analysis into a usable product using design language and principles we have learned throughout the course. I wanted the chair to be used in pairs, creating a love sofa, but I also wanted it to be used by itself, a reflection of self-love. Holding as much meaning free standing as when coupled.
Inspired by a “Cutting Cords” meditation, in my first chair design, I envision each chair having strings to attach to another chair, and to itself—a metaphor for the attachments we have within ourselves and our relationship to others. In my reflection about relationships, I came to the conclusion that we have keep some attachments to ourselves in order for any relationship to work in the first place. Furthermore, when we detach from others we have an opportunity to reattach to ourselves in order to heal from the loss.
For the development of the sofa, I reflected upon when couples decide to live together. They have photos of the relationship displayed on their walls, and they buy furniture for their new home. This is the furniture for them. Like the photographs, it speaks about the relationship, it’s a reminder of love, but it has mass, it occupies physical space, it’s interactive, and it’s useful. Setting up the sofa—attaching the two chairs together—would be a process—a metaphor for the building of the relationship—but is also an opportunity for bonding between the couple. It’s not a sofa, it’s a love sofa. They would most likely buy their chairs together, but if by any chance they each already had a chair—coming from a previous relationship or having purchased one in their “single” phase, wanting to embrace the concept of the chair—they could pair up.
As I have said before, in my first design, I envision each chair will have strings to attach to another chair and to attach to itself. The sofa will not work if the user decides, in the set up, to use all strings to attach to the other chair. The strings, made of a comfortable fabric (like the suggestion for jumbo knitting strings), would bundle in the space in between the chairs and have a little give, creating a hammock-like surface for a “love nest” of sorts. The couple could put their arms through in between the strings for more comfort when cuddling on the nest. In my second design, to simplify further and make the concept more rational, the attachment occurs, my kicking up the front leg of the chair and sliding it through a back pocket of the opposing chair’s hammock (actual hammock like cloth piece—not strings).
The chairs would most likely be mass manufactured and therefore be exactly the same, unless I create a line of interchangeable chairs. With this in mind, when designing how they were going to look together as a love sofa, I knew I would be working with symmetry, although not mirror or exact symmetry, but a cross-body symmetry (like when facing another human being: inverted). Although I explored the idea of armchairs, a no-armchair was the simplest and most effective solution. I wanted to keep it clean so that the user wouldn’t be overwhelmed with parts, or when looking at it, or trying to figure out how it works, and the message of the chair could come through clearly, especially knowing the string attachment in the first chair design would already be complicated. With this, the “upper body” of the chair was designed mostly with the notion that it would become even more important when used with another chair, because it needed to convey “unit” and “unity” visually as well as functionally to the user. The structure of the chairs, the legs, on the other hand, speak more to “unit” in the idea of “oneness” and “wholeness of the self”. When paired with another chair that idea cannot be lost, and the chairs have to be visually complimentary to one another—attributing to the philosophy that “one adds to the other” and “completes the other” as a unit but they are whole within themselves and that is why the structure of the union works and holds strongly. I achieved this in the first chair by applying the law of continuity around the chairs body and in the way each chair aligns with each other to make the love sofa. In the second design, I achieved this by applying a counter intuitive rotation in the structure of the chair body.
I said before I designed a chair for the couple, but it is also for the single, the separated, the divorced, the widow, and the self-loving. It changes form, from sofa to chair and chair to sofa, but maintains the idea of love the qualities and ties, even if shown in different ways. A quick note: my work is mostly a reflection of a relationship between two people. I intentionally did not want to go further into discussion or reflection of monogamous vs polyamorous relationships.
