Dadash — Amir Design

dadash chair

An Indoor - Outdoor Lounge Chair
My Role: Design & Production Management

Dadash is a manifestation of a private journey in both design and fabrication, and it is its final performance as a lounge chair that commands to fascinate. Inspired by personal memory, but transformed through the investigative methodology of material manipulation, this chair captures the essence of its concept in the rigor of the creative and manufacturing processes.

The language instilled into Dadash’s design focused on simplicity and practicality to help balance the inherent emotional complexity of the creator’s inspiration. As such, the objective was to use a single flat surface and morph it into a visually stunning lounge chair.

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in memory of ‘dadash’

It is often that irresistible yearn to immortalize a memory that motivates one to commemorate a lost loved one. However naïve this act may be, it is an acceptable and often therapeutic way of dealing with loss. ‘Dadash,’ meaning ‘brother’ in Turkish, draws inspiration from a relationship in which one companion had parted, leaving the other in chaos, solitude, and void, but with a notable memory of his last project involving manipulation of a surface to achieve different forms.

1 sheet,

2 cuts,

5 folds.

The design process began with a sheet of paper that was inflicted with several incisions and underwent a series of folds. Given the pliability of paper, it was possible to efficiently find a theoretical balance between aesthetics, structural integrity, and ergonomics.

The paper study further helped lay a foundation for choreography that was essential during the transformation of Dadash from paper into a steel medium.

Design sustainability

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Minimum Material
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Minimum Waste
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Optimized Fabrication
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Throughout the development of this chair, it was important to maximize the design potential with minimal material usage in order to uphold the sustainability values that we deem indispensable. For that reason, steel was the material of choice to represent the original paper model. Like paper, steel also comes in a sheet format and allows for a similar manipulation with cutting and folding. By using the entire metal sheet to yield two chairs helped optimize the material, further fulfilling our mission to leave minimal waste. In addition, the self-supported structure of the chair avoids the utilization of external reinforcing material, thus contributing to a minimalistic approach to design.

Paper vs. steel

The simple appearance of the chair may surreptitiously convey the ease with which it was created; however, the process of realizing the final product made out of steel according to the choreography predetermined by a paper study model, unsurprisingly revealed a challenge. In order to express the pliability inherent to paper in steel, it was necessary to continuously re-explore the paper model when trying to confirm a sturdy sheet of metal into the desired form. Cycling between the multiple paper prototype reincarnations and exhaustive trials of subtractive manufacturing gave birth to the final version of Dadash.