Daniel Rowe, Low Armchair (Student)

For my year 12 major project, I designed an armchair that is not only ergonomic, but has a minimalist design coupled with a retro and vintage appearance. It was designed using curves and sharp angles to provide contrast throughout the project. I applied a dark and smooth aesthetic appearance to my project using dark Tasmanian blackwood and multiple layers of finishing. In doing so, this piece of furniture has the ability to suit any room and works will all other types of furniture and colour. This project required a high range of skills that I already had in order to design and manufacture this product. Along with this, I needed to educate myself and improve on these skills in order to create a piece with that quality that I was able to. To create prototypes for my design, I used my pre-existing knowledge of the CAD program, Fusion 360, coupled with a continuously evolving skill level to create 3D designs, which were printed out using a 3D printer. This allowed me to analyse and critique my designs and make changes to reach my final design. The limiting factors of this project will include my level of skill and ability throughout each process of my design. I also created a full scale mockup out of plywood as a way of further evaluating my design and ensuring that all measurements and angles were proportionate to the rest of the chair. I created my armchair using a selection of high quality pieces of Tasmanian blackwood. This timber is easily machinable, yet sturdy and also aesthetically appealing. This, coupled with my use of midnight green shiny velvet upholstery produced a retro style to the chair, and is what gives it such a unique and original look. I used a long list of high-end machinery to produce this piece, which is shown in the finished profile, which reflects this factor that affected production. Another factor of my major work is time. I spent hundreds of hours of out of school time producing my portfolio to accommodate this major work. I also spent over a hundred hours perfecting my CAD prototypes, evaluating them and restarting until I designed the project that I was completely happy with. On top of all of this, I spent every class hour and spare time I had in the classroom creating the actual chair. As a result of this, an extremely high level of time management was important and a constant work ethic needed to be employed from start to finish in order to make sure that all work in the portfolio and workshop was completed and to the highest quality. The function of an armchair, as with any chair, is to provide a place of comfort for people to sit down and relax. Armchairs in particular, due to their arm rests, allow people to lay either their arms or other objects such as food and drink on these support beams providing extra comfort. The armchair that I designed differs from others, as I incorporated ergonomic designs and shaping into the structure of the armchair that provides for extra comfort, but also supports a vast range of seating positions. NBSC Freshwater Senior Campus - Photographed by Alvin Thereira - Teacher Ben Percy - Upholstery by Steal the Limelight

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.