The upholstery family

The consumer makes its way in to the design process. A lot of furniture brands give the consumer the opportunity to make their own decisions about how their new furniture will look like, they can compose the furniture to their own preference. They can choose what kind of sofa group they want for their homes, how many elements and what kind of elements they would like to have. They can choose the fabric and color of the fabric as well as make decisions on small details like the feet of the furniture and the finishing of the seams and also functional details like an armrest, headrest and extra comfort . The consumer can play with these elements and compose their perfect piece of furniture for their homes.

This is where I want to jump in with this new project, I wanted to design a piece of furniture where you can change things not before you purchase the piece but when you own the piece.

The project consists of 1 chair frame with a family of ‘skins’ (upholsteries). You can ‘dress up’ this chair frame by changing its skin, the chair will get a different look. These skins are designed both aesthetic and functional. Some skins will have functionalities like a headrest, armrest, extra comfort etc. Each family member has his own color combination of materials. The consumer can choose themselves which part of the family they want to adopt and can add parts by choice. The skins can be changed by the consumer themselves.

The skin is connected to the chair frame by powerfull magnets which makes it very easy to change the skin. You can add an extra backrest and the armrests to the chair as quick and easy as you want to take them out. Maybe it could also be interesting the use blind magnet connections so you can change the color of the upholstery by flipping the back to the front??? A lot of things are possible within this concept.. I’m open for ideas and would like to collaborate with a furniture company to bring this project to a higher level.

Material powdercoated steel, Kvadrat Divina fabric