Hasta La Ideas

This wonderful SYT chair was designed and built by Theda Vollert, as an Industrial Design student at Germany’s BURG (a/k/a the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle). Vollert fabricated the chair using steel tube, Danish cord and recycled leather.

ID students, take note: As overseen by professor Konrad Lohöfener, the presentation of this project–and those of other students in the class–is particularly excellent: Well-lit photography showing mockups, materials, process shots, the beautiful finished product, and use cases. My only gripe is that no sketches or drawings are included.

In Vollert’s words:

“We sit constantly, and thus feel that sitting on chairs is natural. However, sitting brings us into a static posture, for which our anatomy is actually not made at all.

“With SYT, the rigidity of the chair is broken up by a simple rotating mechanism of the backrest. Suddenly, a new level emerges that can be used in different ways. The movement of the object playfully supports the movement of people, since it does not dictate a specific posture, but allows different positions. It offers a variety of angles of inclination of the back: For leaning, kneeling, sitting backwards with the backrest as a shelf and balancing one’s arms on the rotation point*.

“SYT invites you to discover the possibilities of different postures and to give space to movement.”

Image: CHOREO, Roman Häbler & Lars-Ole Bastar

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*German speakers: Vollert’s project description above was machine-translated from German and edited for clarity by me; it’s possible I’ve misconstrued the end of the asterisked sentence. Vollert’s original text was:

“…das rückwärtsgewandte Sitzen mit der Lehne als Ablagefläche und das Ausbalancieren des Rotationspunktes beim Sitzen auf der beweglichen Ebene.“

Which I interpreted as:

“…sitting backwards with the backrest as a shelf and balancing one’s arms on the rotation point.”

If I’ve gotten it wrong, please let me know!