Inspired by Millais’ “Ophelia,” this lounge chair drapes a laminated seat over a cardboard egg crate, cradling the body in a surrendered, end-of-day recline.

CONCEPT

Ophelia grew out of a deeply personal place. I wanted to design a lounge chair that allows for complete decompression at the end of the day. Living in the city can be overwhelming, and everything takes a toll. At the end of the day, I need a place to sit in stillness, where my body can rest while my mind lets go.

PRECEDENTS

Ophelia draws on two precedents: Zaha Hadid’s Z-Chair and Charles and Ray Eames’ LCW. The Z-Chair inspired a seat that reads as one continuous gesture, folding from backrest to footrest. The LCW showed how laminating thin layers turns a flexible sheet into lasting structure, the principle behind Ophelia’s laminated cardboard seat. Where the Eameses molded wood with heat and pressure, Ophelia is folded by hand.

MATERIAL MANIPULATION

From an initial slot and joint test to repeating the manipulation to create a square grid, the slotted ribs began to interlock into a self-supporting form, developing into the base system for the final chair. From there, a scored, folded sheet draped over the egg-crate base, creating a continuous seat.

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

Ophelia took four full-scale prototypes in under two weeks, each one testing what the last one taught. The first, made from moving boxes reused from a Seattle-to-New York move, jointed its pieces together organically with no egg-crate structure, and it failed completely. The second went back to the original concept to test early structure and ergonomics. The third introduced ribs shaped like rolling hills, with flared edges and a tall backrest. The final build laminates three sheets into a rounded seat whose back folds into the ribs, locking the chair into one connected unit.

DESIGN SOLUTION

To design Ophelia, I started with a feeling rather than a form: the need for a place to fully decompress at the end of the day. Inspired by John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia,” in which the heroine floats held entirely by the water beneath her, I set out to design a lounge chair whose structure does the work so the body doesn’t have to. I studied lounge posture to set the key dimensions, a 17″ seat height, 18″ seat depth and a 105° to 120° back angle, so the body could settle into a supported recline. Through material experiments, I learned that slotting cardboard ribs at right angles creates a self-supporting egg-crate base. I then built four full-scale prototypes in under two weeks. The first, made from reused moving boxes with no egg-crate structure, failed completely, and each version after that tested what the last one taught. Drawing on the Eameses’ LCW, the final build uses a laminated seat that drapes over the ribs and folds into them, locking the chair into one connected unit.

Ophelia in situ