BCU Edu Chair

Product Design

A chair built for the discussion classroom.

A commission from Beijing City University while I was teaching there as a visiting lecturer at Crafterwork. I led a team of more than ten undergraduate and graduate students through a full design cycle — research, prototyping, tooling — to produce a classroom chair that could move, fold, swivel, and adapt to a more discussion-driven way of teaching.

In a sunlit corner of the brief — the chair the school asked us to make.
In a sunlit corner of the brief — the chair the school asked us to make.
### Designed around four users

The brief came from four directions at once. Students wanted more space and color. Teachers needed free-standing seats over fixed rows. Administrators pushed for an open, discussion-friendly classroom. Facilities staff asked for fewer dead corners to clean. Every decision below answers one of those four briefs.

Workshop with the team — cardboard, foam, and a tape measure before any pixel was rendered.
Workshop with the team — cardboard, foam, and a tape measure before any pixel was rendered.
### From sketch to factory floor

Three structural strategies were considered before settling on an injection-molded shell over a cast-aluminum swivel base. From there: full CAD, three rounds of foam-and-cardboard mock-ups at the factory, and a tooling check before the first production batch.

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### Move, swivel, fold, stack

The base rolls and locks. The seat swivels 360°. The tablet arm folds away when the chair is pushed against a wall. Three chairs nest on top of each other for storage, and the perforated shell breathes — and dries — in a humid Beijing summer.

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In use — the discussion classroom it was made for.
In use — the discussion classroom it was made for.