{"id":356979,"date":"2026-03-25T08:57:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T08:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/356979\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T08:57:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T08:57:16","slug":"industrial-designer-david-irwins-molded-chair-prototyping-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/356979\/","title":{"rendered":"Industrial Designer David Irwin’s Molded Chair Prototyping Process"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Do people care how their furniture is made? They might, if you showed them. A recent exhibition put on by Proof of Concept<\/a>, a design platform that explores production methods, revealed the prototyping process behind David Irwin<\/a>‘s Baleen Lounge Chair. It shows the public the unfamiliar-to-them stage where you have to manually create affordable stand-ins for industrial processes in order to produce an initial, well, proof of concept.<\/p>\n

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Irwin, a Northern Irish industrial designer and Assistant Professor at Northumbria University’s School of Design, explains what you’re looking at:<\/p>\n

“Compression moulding at furniture scale beginning with the mould itself: an MDF prototype standing in for a future solid aluminium industrial tool. [The] layers of MDF [were] painstakingly assembled to form a two-part mould capable of withstanding the pressure required to press a PET chair shell.”<\/p>\n

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“PET (Polyester) is pressed under heat and pressure. The mould defines curvature, stiffness and surface quality. Structure and form are inseparable outcomes of the mould.”<\/p>\n

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“Without a water jet cutter, the production process typically used for accurately cutting the final PET shell, a manual approach had to be employed.”<\/p>\n

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Through April 18th the mold, pressing and resulting chair are being exhibited as part of “Proof of Concept #3: Mould<\/a>” at London’s Aram Gallery.<\/p>\n

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