Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Buyssens, Ryan

Area of Concentration

Art

Abstract

We sit in chairs every day without thinking twice about it. My thesis asks what happens when this changes. By transforming 14-gauge sheet metal into folded, origami-inspired forms, my project reimagines the chair as something more than a place to sit, exploring how a chair can function as both functional furniture and sculptural artwork that challenges the way we experience our own bodies in space. The collection consists of five chairs, each built through bending, folding, rolling, and welding. Inspired by the work of Ron Arad and Vivian Beer, the series plays with the idea that a hard, industrial material can feel soft, delicate, and even feminine. Drawing on phenomenology, Dadaism, hostile architecture, and modernist design theory, the work examines how much meaning can live inside a single everyday piece of furniture. These chairs are not designed to be comfortable. They are designed to make you pay attention. Through instability, visual tension, and material contradiction, they turn the simple act of sitting into a moment of awareness, suggesting that even the most ordinary things can carry weight far beyond their function.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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