If you’re reading this, odds are that you are sitting. How does it feel? Are you upright or slouched? Do you feel supported, or not? And does it feel like the chair or bench cares at all about the shape you make, or the way your body wants to sit?

Why is our posture so often compromised by the furniture we use? 

We live in a chronic-back-pain era, so why don’t we design our furniture with more respect for our own physiology?

As a biomechanics fanatic who spends a lot of time sitting, I think about this quite a bit. I wondered if I could build a chair that not only acknowledged the form of the sitter, but did so using the same design principle as the body itself…

Human physiology is an interplay between tension and compression: muscles and connective tissues pull on bones. Bones keep space so our muscles don’t contract into a ball, and in return our tissues connect the bones, keeping them from falling to the floor. These forces are synergistic; remove either and we could not function.

“Intension” is likewise composed of tensile rope and compressive wood elements. They depend on each other to support the individual, and their interaction is what gives the chair function.

I wanted future ‘sitters’ to feel like the designer understood their postural needs, that there was intention behind where support was offered. 

Anyway, back to where we were: how is sitting going?

I designed and fabricated this chair for the MIT class 4.031: Objects and Interactions. The assignment was to build a chair with 1”x2” pine boards.