As the internet and Photoshop has taught us, pictures aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes they’re manipulated to a point where it’s something completely different. Other times, they’re optical illusions playing tricks on the eye. But what if these manipulations can be applied to actual furniture?
This is the challenge designer Jong Ha Choi took upon himself for his graduation project at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Choi has created a collection of stools and small tables that transform from a folded two-dimensional image to a three-dimensional furniture piece titled De-Dimension. In a short demonstration, the furniture looks like a flat art piece hanging on the wall. Choi then walks up, takes it down, folds it out, and sits on the stool before folding it up again and hanging it back on the wall. For this collection, Choi started with notions of developing forms of image and how image changes from photography and film towards virtual reality.
“I was interested in the ways we see images from a flat screen,” he says. “If we saw an image of a chair, we can directly understand that it is a chair. Even though an image shows only one side of the object, we can still imagine the shape of it, and sometimes even how it is constructed. Physically, however, the chair on the screen has different dimensions to a chair we use in 3-dimensional space. I was thinking that if the essence of both 2D and 3D chairs are the same, it would be possible to transit one to another.”
https://vimeo.com/144345861
The tables and stools are made out of aluminum, steel, and stainless steel. They also use various hinges to help the piece folds from flat to 3D with a precise folding mechanism. Before turning to these material for crafting, Choi took his time figuring out the mechanism making several models out of paper and plastic. “Because the paper model worked, I thought that changing the material to metal would make the furniture strong enough to function as a piece of furniture. Now I’m planning on testing the mechanism with the other materials and various shapes,” Choi reveals.
Watching the furniture go from flat to a usable 3D object is stunning. You’ll play the clip on repeat trying to piece together how the furniture works. It seems like a Choi is playing a magic trick, when it’s actually just immense skill and talent to put together this eye catching collection.
