Chioggia Chair
Chioggia Chair prototype
Furniture prototype, 2010
This chair was designed and fabricated by the author as a part of Massimo Scolari’s advanced architectural studio at Yale. The studio focused on the medieval town of Chioggia, in the Venice Lagoon, whose urban morphology informed the bifurcated structure of the furniture piece. The Corso and Vena Canal form a double spine, dividing the city into bands and leaving a sliver of land that functions as a civic and commercial strip. The seat and back of the chair are 18 gauge mild steel, which were profile-cut on a CNC waterjet, folded and rolled by hand using a metal break and english wheel, and buffed and polished with a chrome finish. The legs are steel tubing, welded and given a gun-bluing finish.
The chair back folds and is affixed to the structural spine
The back laps over the seat and places the two surfaces in tension
The chair from the front
Looking from the side
The back of the chair
The interior view of the overlap between chair seat and back
Axonometric drawing of the chair prototype
Where the chair back folds onto the spine