In the summer of 2019, I was lucky enough to be able to build a chair while in Scandinavia. While the majority of my time was spent in Denmark, I had the opportunity to travel to the surrounding Scandanavian, including Sweden and Finland. In the process of brainstorming, I had three goals when making the chair. 

My first goal is portability to cater to younger individuals who are more likely to move around. My second goal is a common furniture goal– comfort. My last goal was to create a piece of furniture that calms the user. This was achieved by designing a rocking chair.

Starting off, I iterated with a bunch of sketches, with a lot of my work inspired by famous Scandinavian designers and chairs, such as The Swan and The Egg chairs by Arne Jacobsen, Alvar Aalto’s Paimio chair, and the furniture of Bruno Mathsson. Throughout the process, everything I did was done in the metric system. After my sketches, I made four 1:5 models out of tracing paper, cardboard, and balsa wood.

After figuring out this model, I drew a to-life drawing. Using this, I created a life-sized cardboard model, double-checking the curve of the rocker. After creating the cardboard model, I created an MDF model with a canvas fabric on the seat, checking the rocker and comfortability of the chair.

After these two life-sized prototypes, I started building the chair using plywood for the sides and 2 by 4s as the horizontal supports. Using threaded inserts and hex screws to attach the plywood sides to the horizontal supports. To add stability and ease of assembly, I also added dowel rods in the horizontal supports that aligned with holes in the plywood form. 

When it came to the seat, I bought some thick dark leather that would sling around the back and seat horizontal supports with a wooden rectangular prism that I had pulled back with string. This tension added comfort to the chair.

After the chair was completed, I was able to fit the horizontal supports into my luggage, and I wrapped the sides up as an extra item.