'resilience’ reimagines motorized wheelchair as assistive chaise lounge with hidden wheels

motorized wheelchair ‘resilience’ in aluminum and metal

The indoor and outdoor motorized wheelchair ‘Resilience’ embodies a luxurious chaise lounge draped with aluminum and leather and powered by wheels hidden under the canopy of its frame. Resilience is the ability of a person to withstand or get back up from a difficult time, stronger and braver than ever. Designers Hanyoung Lee, Hyunsub Shin, Seongmin Ha, Soyeon Park, Jun Hong, and Haejun Park draw from this fortified mindset for their wheelchair design which they name right after the psychological ability.

For them, ‘Resilience’ is an indoor and outdoor wheelchair designed for individuals with reduced mobility, helping them facilitate their daily activities on their while seated. With its flexible plastic components, Resilience exudes comfort and cocoons the body in its soft cushion. The robust aluminum frame offers long-time usage of the wheelchair without wearing it out while its tail light, crafted with transparent glass, blinks sharply to alert nearby passersby of its arrival.

Most of the wheelchair’s part is constructed with metal, which for the design team symbolizes strength and delicacy while engineering a well-built frame. On the side of the armrests, the controller is clothed with leather to provide comfort to the user should they want to rest their arms there and add padding to the buttons.

images courtesy of Hanyoung Lee, Hyunsub Shin, Haejun Park, Seongmin Ha, J. Hong, Soyeon P.

‘Resilience’ wheelchair comes with its own transport

For the headrest of the ‘Resilience’ wheelchair, an oblong cushion is propped to the seat’s frame rather than attaching it directly to the chair to enable some bounce that can follow the direction of the user’s head movement. For the leg rests, the user can choose either they want to pull it up and laze about as if they were in a spa or bring it down whenever they are ready to power up the seat and roll away.

The visual element of the bottom part recalls the ripples on the surface of the clams and shells with their pronounced arches, sculpted and then embedded onto the wheelchair. By hiding the wheels of the motorized wheelchair with the husk-like covering, ‘Resilience’ oozes the chair design found in cinema houses or chaise lounges in luxurious hospitality settings. For the colors, nuances of soft gray, light chrome, and cool brown bestow the wheelchair an aura of elegance that makes it a candidate to be a classic motorized chair.

Aside from the wheelchair, ‘Resilience’ comes with a vehicle named ‘Brio’ that can transport the wheelchair, its hue following in the footsteps of its buddy seat. The purpose of the transport and wheelchair design by Hanyoung Lee, Hyunsub Shin, Seongmin Ha, Soyeon Park, Jun Hong, and Haejun Park is to provide its users the liberty to move around without the obstacles that often arise when traveling from home to specific destinations.

the motorized wheelchair embodies a luxurious chaise lounge draped with aluminum and leather