'no seat belt required': when a car body becomes an armchair

drawing from his childhood, jean-baptiste, the founder of waiting for ideas, has created an armchair dubbed ‘no seat belt required’. the handmade piece of furniture takes shape as a mix of harmonious curves and sharp angles much like the body of a modern automobile. this seat is an exercise in transforming a technical material into something functional and artistic.all images courtesy of waiting for ideas

with no use of 3D design software, jean-baptiste relied on his own intuition and the ‘trial and error’ method. the designer built a number of cardboard prototypes to test out the shape and depth of the final product. while building these prototypes, the idea for the frame emerged as a reflection of a real car: a curved body sitting on an angular frame.

the designer experimented with old and broken car hoods to understand how the material works and reacts under pressure. first, he removed the supports that keep the car paneling and hoods rigid, then cut, bent, and stretched it to the desired form. the benefit of using the soft aluminum metal of a car hood is the ease with which it can be shaped, but it wouldn’t be able to support the weight of a body in its current form. so that, he inserted metal bars into the seat to support the metal and rigidify. the frame was much more straightforward in the end with each bar cut and then welded together to fit the seat itself.

the two are linked together by only six screws and as a result, the seat had to be positioned very carefully before poured the polyurethane foam. after it dried he shaped the seat and used a lot of sanding to get the required finish to the piece. finally, jean-baptiste was able to apply a primer to the frame with a coat of black paint, before the final layers of chrome paint and varnish went on to protect the surface of the piece.