The Splice Lounger

Client: Self Initiated
Company: Pearson Bulmer Design
Deliverables: Experimental furniture design

Rationale

The Splice Lounger is an exploration of form and materiality within the context of designing for the Australian lifestyle. The form is reflective of a ‘relaxed casualness’- a casualness that embraces the warm weather and the indoor / outdoor living style of many Australians. For this purpose, the chair has been made as an outdoor lounger, inviting for quiet relaxing, as well as entertaining.

Design Challenge

Made from steam-bent timber, Splice was designed to commercialise the steaming process, through a material study of bend curvature, segment length, and part repetition.

The Splice project became a design challenge to use steam bending for an outdoor chair after noticing a lack of ergonomic, timber chairs suited for life outdoors. Splice uses no lamination, joinery or CNC shaping that would critically warp or fail in the harsh Australian weather. It is also made of segments, which potentially means offcuts could be used. A steam box was built, and a series of tests were conducted to discover the best method of steam bending (and the appropriate size of the curves). The aim was to create a simplified process for small to medium batch production.

Production Details

Despite there being six different parts to steam bend, only three molds are needed in production. This is due to the shared geometry between similar parts. For structural rigidity, milled timber backing ribs are screwed onto the underside of the bent timber slats. All the timber used is to be American Oak (straight grain boards selected). This timber has good bending properties and is light in colour.