Ori Accent Chair by Manish Maheshwari is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2021 Bronze A' Design Award in Furniture Design Competition Category.
BronzeFurniture· 2021
Ori Accent Chair
Client: Manish Maheshwari
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Furniture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #114797The Design
About Ori Accent Chair
Ori is an accent chair inspired by the art of origami and by the form of a ruffled palm leaf. The design translates paper folding into metal folding. Thin galvanised metal gives the chair strength and a light, paper-like appearance and suits outdoor use. Wood is applied only at the seat and the backrest to improve seating comfort. Bolts and magnets join the folded parts into one piece with a clean finish. The chair folds down for compact packing and delivery. The colours are drawn from the sunflower. Unfolded dimensions are 880 mm high and 950 mm in diameter.
The Recognition
About the Bronze A' Design Award
Ori Accent Chair is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. Ori Accent Chair is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. Ori Accent Chair splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Interviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
The structure of a ruffled palm leaf is uniquely formed in nature. The broad circular leaf spanning up to 5ft in diameter originates from one thin branch. This plant leaf inspires the shape and form of the Ori chair. Origami technique became the yin yang fit for translating the ruffled palm leaf form into an ergonomically designed furniture piece. The chairs' colours are derived from the sunflower, making it a stark piece of art as well.
How long did it take you to design this particular concept?
The research and conceptulisation for this design started during the lock down due to pandemic in 2020 and was finished in 3 months.
Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?
No, the design is not being produced or used by another company. we are producing the chair ourselves. but we are open to sell or lease the production rights to interested company or a studio.
Grand Interview
Your innovative translation of origami principles into metal folding for the Ori Accent Chair represents a fascinating bridge between traditional Japanese art and contemporary furniture design - could you elaborate on how this creative connection first emerged in your design process?
Metal as a material was familiar to me from childhood, as my father owned a metal foundry. I began designing and developing products from scrap metal brought to the foundry for melting, turning them into corporate souvenirs. The quality of my work led to more opportunities in various fields such as architecture (facades, foyers, canopies), art (sculptures), and interior design (furniture and decor products). I have always enjoyed tackling the challenges metalwork presents.In 2012, a question came to mind: how could a metal sheet be hand-folded? This thought naturally led me to explore origami. We procured brass and copper sheets and folded them to create small products and jewelry. Over time, we progressed to tabletop items, then to chairs, lights, and other furniture.The Ori Chair was my second chair design. Using the hand-folding technique from the first chair gave me a breakthrough, enabling me to hand-fold larger objects like chairs. While designing the Ori Chair, I aimed for more romanticism by creating something complex yet visually simple, aesthetically pleasing, and comfortable while staying loyal to the material we chose.
The Ori Accent Chair's striking combination of sunflower-inspired colors with minimal design elements creates a bold yet harmonious presence - what guided your color selection process, and how did you achieve this delicate balance between statement and subtlety?
When the first prototype of the Ori Chair was created, it featured a raw metal finish. We wanted to introduce a bold color to enhance its visual appeal. The chair's circular form reminded us of a flower, which led us to seek inspiration from nature. The vibrant hue of sunflower petals stood out as an ideal choice—it is fresh, warm, and bold, perfectly complementing the design and adding a lively, harmonious touch to the piece.
In developing the Ori Accent Chair's unique folding mechanism, you faced significant challenges with metal pressure points and slit dimensions - could you share the breakthrough moment that led to achieving the perfect manual folding capability?
The biggest challenge in this process was achieving the success of hand-folding the metal itself. If the metal could be folded by hand, it also meant it could potentially deform under external pressure. We worked on many factors, including the slit length, width, direction, and metal thickness. The slit size and direction were meticulously planned to facilitate ease of folding while ensuring rigidity once the form was complete.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, is an ancient art form that converts paper into 3d objects. Based on this principle, the Ori chair derives its concept. The design translates paper folding into metal folding and, ultimately, a unique piece of furniture.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Folding metal comes with its own set of challenges to achieve ergonomically comfortable seating. The idea behind the chair using the origami technique was to ease the packaging and delivery. The Ori Chair can be easily folded up and packed into a small box, considerably reducing the volume of the package. It uses simple mechanisms to attach into one piece giving it a crisp and clean finish. 880mm(h) x 950mm(dia.) are the unfolded chair's dimensions.
- Tags
- Origami, foldable, ergonomics, metal, minimal, nature-inspired
- Production Technology
- The sturdy but thin metal used in the chair is galvanised to take on the harsh outdoors while visually being light as paper. Metal being a cradle-to-cradle material propagates sustainable development. Wood is used as moderating material to provide the comfort of seating instead of the harshness of the metal. Its use is restricted only to crucial parts, including the seating and backrest of the chair.
- Design Challenge
- The Ori chair challenged our 7 years of experience working with metal since combining metal with origami techniques in itself is a challenge. Working on relieving pressure at the ridges by bringing in the right slit dimension and connecting the bridge between two slits to avoid sheer in metal proved strenuous. Break-through was about getting it right for an individual to bend manually by hands. It became essential to hit the sweet spot for the number of folds to get perfect ergonomics which finally came through trials and errors.
- Research
- The structure of a ruffled palm leaf is uniquely formed in nature. The broad circular leaf spanning up to 5ft in diameter originates from one thin branch. This plant leaf inspires the shape and form of the Ori chair. Origami technique became the yin yang fit for translating the ruffled palm leaf form into an ergonomically designed furniture piece. The chairs' colours are derived from the sunflower, making it a stark piece of art as well.
- Inspiration
- The Ori chair is a translation of the art of Origami into metal folding and, ultimately, a unique piece of furniture. It uses the colour combinations of a Sunflower. Bright yellow expresses a bold presence of the chair as an art piece. The trend of earthen finishes and materials are primarily used in architecture, interior, and landscape design. The colours blended with minimal design flares draw attention while complementing confined interiors or outdoor space.
- Project Duration
- The project research started in 2020 and was finished in 3 months
- Operation Flow
- The Ori chair uses a mechanism based on the principle of origami. It uses simple tools like bolts and magnets to assemble itself into a useable piece of furniture.
- Team Members
- Designer: Manish Maheshwari
Project director: Piyush Maheshwari - Image Credits
- Image #1: Photographer: Dhiram Patel
Image #2,#3,#4,#5: Photographer: Manish Maheshwari , Editing: Roshni shah
Illustrator: Roshni Shah
Video Credits: Dhiram Patel
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