Stool Transforms Into Armchair Under Pressure, Concept by Arthur Bodolec

For his thesis project at the Strate Collège Designers, Arthur Bodolec designed a piece of furniture that transforms from stool to chair when you sit on it. He calls the piece Astonishing Jack.

Bodolec talked to iDesign about how he came up with the idea and why one of his biggest inspirations was Tim Burton's movies.

Like Us on Facebook :

Jacob Kleinman: What was your inspiration for creating this piece?

Arthur Bodolec: I had been focusing on more pragmatic design problems during my scholarship and I wanted to push the boundaries of how design could be used for my thesis project. I hence chose a more philosophical challenge which had been a personal challenge also: how do you spark astonishment? I wanted to better understand how we are astonished and see if I could integrate that into the process of design. Astonishment seems to be so ungraspable, I had to dig into that!

Through my research I understood that one way to astonish people was through doing the opposite of what we are used to. I then had to create a product that would use my theory as main principle. This is when I chose to make a piece of furniture to demonstrate my idea.

It seems obvious to us that furnitures should be dead pieces that are stable and dead. They need to be predictable so that we can rely on them. The only pieces of furniture that are not like that are in Tim Burton's movies, but that can't be true. They are in movies fictions, right?

I decided to do the exact opposite and make that dream come true. Realize the impossible.

JK: As your thesis project, how did it fit into your studies in industrial design?

AB: As I mentioned my thesis project was really more of a philosophical challenge. I wanted to focus on something that was beyond common design challenges. And I think this is were design is the most powerful. Industrial design was just the skill I used to illustrate my ideas.

JK: Do you have an specific ideas for more interactive furniture pieces?

AB: I don't consider this chair as an interactive product. It's really more reactive than anything else. I would love to build this chair on a real scale but right now I am focusing on working for my company, Feedly, which focuses on re-thinking the way people feed their mind.

JK: What inspired you to study industrial design?

AB: I think what matters here is not that I chose industrial design but design.

I was always interested in having an impact on the future. There are many jobs out there which participate in that. Design is about changing behaviors. It's about focusing on people, understanding them and their environment and creating the things that will impact on what they do to move them toward a world that we envision. I chose design because I think it's focusing on the most interesting aspect of the challenge: people.