Chair Avatars
This is a display area for my spare chairs - my previous avatars.

Why Chairs?
Chairs symbolize social interaction. They invite you to sit down and stay a while; take a load off. You're probably sitting right now. We sit down to digest news. We sit to think. We sit to be social. You might say chairs are the first social media. Okay, you wouldn't but let's pretend.

There are awesome looking chairs that are painful to sit on (talkin' to you Frank Lloyd Wright and owners of Indian restaurants everywhere). There are comfy chairs that look ugly. Chairs fit all situations - from thrones to bean-bags. Lawn chairs say "relax, enjoy the weather." Kitchen chairs say "have a bite." Dentists' chairs say "sit down and scream a while."

Since joining Twitter in '07, I've experimented with a dynamic avatar - it's recognizable as my stream, but changes often. Happy to have you 'follow' me and join the conversation. Pull up a chair.

The avatars begin below...

Sep 18, 2011

Miesrolo Chair from Uros Vitas is a great exploration of tension and compression. Uros studied at the University of Belgrade and says that sustainable design is a key motivator for him.  With a judicious selection of angles on the wooden staves, and a high-tensile-strength fabric band, the chair will either roll up in one direction, or form a shapely chair in the other.  You really need to see the pictures in various states.  The band along the 'outside' must be under a lot of stress in spots! If it let go, that would be quite a dramatic drop to the ground, but meanwhile, it's an awesome use of materials and a great illustration of basic mechanical principals.