This was an assignment for my design making class. I was assigned to design a chair made entirely out of cardboard and glue for the third floor "link" (the glass enclosure connected the two architecture hall buildings at UNL).  I was introduced to the space as a place a student might come with book in hand after coming out of the nearby library. 

 

The first thing I noticed about the space was that it was very visible.  Any chair that is there is seen many more times each day than it is used. I wanted to create a chair that would be visually interesting and striking.  As I explored different concepts for the chair I kept coming back to "big ideas."  Books and architecture books in specific are full of big ideas and I wanted to design a chair that expressed that.  I started by drawing out a light bulb in different ways and then one of these light bulbs looked just like an exclamation point and when I saw it I knew this was the form I wanted to use. 

 

I wanted to keep the design as the simple exclamation point, but I also wanted to make sure it was striking and itself exemplified a big idea.  I created this effect, by raising the base off the ground with an interior pillar and attaching the back of the chair to the railing with a masked support structure unseen from the space itself.  I made the back 5 feet tall (which set the porportion for the whole chair) to have it look similar to a throne for the big ideas and really strike the viewer.