Erik Newman

This furniture studio will critically engage the chair as an archetype. Chairs have long been a fascination of designers as they require a developed understanding of structure, material, and form. Importantly, chairs represent the cultural mores of the time in which they are produced and are inextricably linked to larger systems of power, technology, and economy. This course will explore the chair as a fluid, dynamic furniture category that is in a reciprocal relationship with culture, technology, and politics and will emphasize a hands-on approach to design and production.

Readings from art and design historians and critics including Galen Cranz, David Getsy, Richard Sennett, Glenn Adamson, and Alice Rawsthorn will be integral to an expansive conversation about the chair. Class readings and discussions will also help contextualize different approaches to construction and fabrication at different scales of production. A wide range of both contemporary and historical design precedents will be explored ranging from traditional Shaker Furniture to Wendell Castle, Faye Toogood, Max Lamb, Egg Collective, Jasper Morrison, and Scott Burton.

By the end of this course, students should expect to have completed technical drawings and a series of detailed scale models.

Furniture shapes how we sit, gather, work, and inhabit space. This studio introduces furniture as both a design category and a fabrication discipline, grounding students in form, proportion, structural logic, material behavior, and full-scale making.

Working primarily in wood, with selective use of light metals, students develop fluency in essential shop processes including joinery, machine operation, lathe turning, and iterative full-scale prototyping. Emphasis is placed on human scale and performance: how the body informs dimension, how materials carry load, and how construction decisions shape both function and meaning.

Projects progress from focused material and joinery studies to resolved furniture pieces. Making is treated as a mode of thinking, with mockups and prototypes used to test, refine, and evaluate ideas through direct engagement with materials.

A primary objective of the course is to build sustained confidence working in the Sullivan Fabrication Center, integrating shop practice into the design process and establishing fabrication as a core component of work at SAIC.

This course is for students seeking foundational experience in furniture design and full-scale fabrication, including Designed Objects students preparing for advanced studios such as Chair Studio and Advanced Furniture, as well as students from Sculpture, Fiber, Fashion, Architecture, and related disciplines. It is typically taken in the second year as a gateway to advanced furniture coursework and pairs well with CNC, with no prior furniture experience required.