Hasta La Ideas

Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Thomas Hurd
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Category: Furniture/Lighting
Award: Student Winner

Polytope X-Board Seating

Polytope is an environmentally conscious flat-pack seating system ideal for temporary seating needs. Comes pre-cut, flat-packed and can be assembled in 15-30 seconds. Polytope is light for easy stacking and redeployment, allowing for dynamic use of space. The shape of Polytope allows for various seating configurations and opportunities for branding.

A large amount of exploration into the Xanita board through a series of directed esquisses which enabled me to better understand the material and its limits, and how far those limits could be pushed. A very quick process of sketching took place but the real design work came about with the use of quick 3D prototype with paper and card and some experimentation with origami, which gave a realistic impression of the limits of folding the paper and how fitting different pieces would actually work (as paper can be bent without damaging the material where as 10mm thick Xanita doesn’t quite allow this) After the initial concept was chosen the aim to transform it in into a one piece assembly began, which in itself proved to be a design challenge, involving a lot of tinkering with dimensions and structures.

Core77: How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

I set my alarm at 3am (the local time of the announcement) figuring I’d probably sleep through it or turn it off and go back to bed. I managed to wake up, but in my 3am daze got confused and thought the winner had been announced, and as I went to turn it off, there came my project! Definitely made the 3am wake up call worth it!

What’s the latest news or development with your project?

Currently I’m working on perfecting my design for mass manufacturer. I’m hoping in the near future to have the first batch produced to start selling online and to event organisers. I’ve had many ideas about maximising the screen printing abilities of the material and this is something I’d like to explore.

Any interesting experiences in developing this project?

While I was doing this project I was having to catch the train back and forth from uni to home with my prototype. I used to get some pretty strange looks, because honestly, who brings their own seat on the train? Although one guy thought it was a great idea and it beat standing during peak hour.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

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