Three Leg Chair

The objective of this project was to design a chair to be manufactured from a four foot square sheet of plywood, using a CNC router. Each student must select an existing chair to use as inspiration. For this project students were also required to select a design constraint such as no mechanical fasteners, an uneven number of legs, multiple sitting orientations, etc.

This chair project was created for the class Architecture - 107 at Diablo Valley College.

The objective of theis project was to design a chair to be manufactured from a four food square sheet of plywood, using a CNC router. Each student must select an existing chair to use as inspiration. For this project students were also required to select a design constraint such as no mechanical fasteners, an uneven number of legs, multiple sitting orientations, etc.

By placing two legs at the front of the chair, the user has greater support during the acts of sitting down and standing up. The increased stability during the moment when the user’s weight is most active helps to prevent the chair from tipping. Using Fusion 360 to model and 3D print a scale mockup of the chair allowed me to test the joinery and assembly of the chair, before building it full scale.

To cut my design, I used a ShopBot CNC router in conjunction with X-Carve to create the tool paths. Because of the four foot square sheet of material constraint, I was impelled to think through each piece of  my design and eliminate anything unnecessary to the design’s structure or function.