Buildner: Chair Competition, 2025

QUESTION/RESEARCH/ANALYSIS

What is a chair? The building block to the overall design.

Chairs /CHer/

Middle English: from Old French chaiere (modern chaire ‘bishop's throne, etc.’, chaise ‘chair’), from Latin cathedra ‘seat’, from Greek kathedra .

The conceptual idea of the chair has existed in the minds of conscious beings for at least five thousand years. What makes a chair a chair? You-might-or-most-likely-not ask yourself while you’re reclining in your 1972 monobloc polypropylene thing, the stark white plastic beams digging into your legs and arms supporting your weight. Five thousand years of development and evolution and human ingenuity, all to not know what the hell a chair is. A symbol? A physical object? A story? The anthropomorphic measurements of a human are integral for understanding why these symbolic sitting stories are (ideally) 100-110 degrees, backrest adjustable, and intended for humans reclined in a “seated position,” typically regarded as a person's buttocks directly on a roughly horizontal surface on which one's weight directly rests.

According to the CDC
Recommendations to Improve Safety in Potato Harvesting and Packing in Southern Colorado HHE-980172

Men cm Women cm

5th 50th 95th 5th 50th 95th

Elbow Rest Height	19.6	23.9	28.4	18.8	23.9	26.9
Shoulder Height	64.9	60.5	65.8	61.6	56.9	62.5
Eye Height	29	80.5	96.5	69.1	74.7	80.0
Sitting Height	85.6	91.4	97.3	79.5	85.3	91.2
Thigh Clearance	12.759.7	15.2	17.8	10.4	14	17.5
Buttock-Knee Length	54.9	59.7	64.5	52.6	57.7	62.7
Knee Height	50	54.6	59.2	48	50.3	54.4
Stool Height	37.1	41.4	46	34	38.1	42.7

Within human anthropomorphic measurement, the importance of understanding all previously stated considerations of design becomes a large factor in defining a chair. We will get to this later, unfortunately,

For 8/2/2025 - The act

The action of sitting is the short 2.5-second act of resting oneself onto a horizontal surface. Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Gluteus maximus, Erector Spinae, Calves, all are activated in this process. The involuntary movements your body performs after thousands of attempts at perfecting each adjustment until the action becomes inaction, guide you to the ‘seated position’. “Yes, okay,” you might say, “I understand the various muscle groups working in tandem as well as the not-so-voluntary-involuntary movement to facilitate this process, but what does it feel like to sit?”

“What does it feel like? ...Why would I ever tell you what it feels like to sit?” I would respond.

“The question we’re trying to get to is, what IS sitting? What IS a chair?”

“But how can you separate the IS from the FEELING?” You say.

“These things, movements, and realities don’t exist by themselves… They coexist with humans… and humans ARE what they FEEL.”

“...Then how could I ever tell you what it feels like to sit?” I say.

Then I try anyway

Someone leaves their home early in the morning, let's say 6 am. A half-full, possibly half-empty cup of coffee in their left hand, sweat beads on their forehead and upper lip. It’s cool today, slight breeze from the west, soft morning glow from the east. Their face feels cold, but somehow so hot, burning up inside, a radiation from the prefrontal cortex. Each step they take recedes from their home, hard ground, equally as hard steps, they keep pace. A car appears as they turn the corner, their car. They open the door with their right hand, left hand still gripping the warm coffee, inevitably to turn cold. The cars stale, their eyes look up to the sky for a brief moment, then back to the coffee, then back to the seat in front of them. Placing the coffee in the cup holder, they hoist themselves into the car. They sit and, for the first time since leaving the house, they take a breath.

“That's what it feels like to sit,” I say.

Question -

How does the act of sitting - with its relation to time - transform a chair from a vessel with possibility to a vessel that is activated?

Sitting… sitting…

The mind wanders while you sit; it’s quite easy to imagine so. Busy days. Stress. I can’t pay the bills. But I can sit. I can regain myself… my humanity by this simple action.

How to explore the possibilities of sitting? What can the action become? What objects can capture the action of sitting?

If we say that the chair is a vessel, which is not intrinsic to the object itself but only with the action of sitting by a human, can become a chair, then what can be activated?

The motion of sitting might provide some insight into this question. The golden ration became a topic of interest after extrapolating frames from a video of me sitting down. The head followed an arch and spiral in the process that, when traced over with the golden ratio, became something much more. This idea needs to be explored.

What other objects, intrinsic vessels, can be unlocked by us…

MODELS

MODELS

MODELS

KDA STUDIO Designers & Management:
Myer Kim
Nathan Trinite
Taven Murrah