Lightweight chair

I visited Gaudi's Sagrada Família in Barcelona and was inspired by a model he built to figure out the most efficient way to transfer the weight of the roof though the columns. His idea was to angle the columns in the direction of the load to minimize their scale and create a sense of lightness inside the church. Gaudi came up with a clever and simple model to help him visualize this angle. He weighted bags to represent the weight of the roof, hung them from strings to represent the columns, and used a mirror to see how the strings were directed in the right orientation.

I was trying to take the same approach of lightening the structure of the chair by directing the weight to the legs in line with the force. I wanted the aesthetic to be light and flowing. 

The structure is made from an assembly of standard tubing connected by sculpted castings that create smooth transitions. Support at the top and bottom edge comes from a bar that sweeps out of the area you would feel. Fabric is pulled tight to create the flexible surface in a similar way as many common office chairs. The fabric transitions into the wooded leg and gives the chair a light and integrated aesthetic.