Megan Czaja’s Oblio stool is designed for people who can’t sit still

Pratt Institute graduate Megan Czaja has designed a stool for ‘Kinesthetes’ – people who need to be active in order to think.

The three-legged maple stool has a seat balanced on a silicone and foam half-sphere, which plugs into a maple convex base, without a fixed connection, enabling the sitter to swivel, rock and bounce.

“I am definitely the kind of person who can’t sit still, and always have been,” Megan told coadg. “My mum likes to tell stories about me falling out of chairs at dinner when I was a kid, and now being sedentary makes me feel sleepy or restless.”

The idea to design a piece of furniture for people like her was inspired by a Danish conference on the importance of play and a book by founder of the National Institute for Play, Dr Stuart Brown in which he identifies eight ‘play personalities’ including the Kinesthete – someone who needs to be active for the sake of being active.

“I began to imagine what day-to day items might look like if they were designed for these people,” said Megan. “Oblio resulted from asking the question, ‘What does it mean to be playful?’.”

The silicone is made lighter by using a semi-rigid foam interior – and the maple seat ‘plugs’ into it without using glue, using a join inspired by Lego. “I wanted to incorporate a hard seat, which is where the wood comes in,” said the designer. “I like sitting on exercise ball chairs, but find sitting on them for prolonged periods of time uncomfortable in terms of support.”

The wooden pieces are all lathed and then soap finished – a traditional Scandinavian process – to protect them while maintaining a natural finish.

The seat’s colours, forms and the use of maple all take their cues from toy design and Scandinavian and specifically Danish furniture. “The overall look is meant to be a bit silly, it is not a stool that takes itself too seriously,” said Megan.

While the stool looks fun, the designer believes its message is important. “Play for adults is often dismissed as a guilty pleasure or seen as unproductive,” she said. “We reach adulthood and we get serious; there are more important things to do than play. It is an unfortunate conclusion, and one that couldn’t be further from the truth: play is an integral part of keeping our minds, bodies, and societies functioning.”

Oblio will be on show as part of Dubai Design Week’s Global Grad Show alongside work from universities including Switzerland’s Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL), Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, the United States’ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Hong Kong Polytechnic.

Further reading for the especially geeky:

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• interview :: richard hardy