A product, be it a chair, a comb, a plate, or anything else, is influenced heavily by the material used to make it. Make something out of a block of material and you can go for blockish forms. Make something out of a sheet, and you’re immediately constrained to only being able to fold/curve/bend that sheet to create a 3D form that is still rooted in 2D. Despite that constraint, the Layup chair achieves a remarkable milestone in pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with a simple piece of bent plywood.
Designed by Nathan Martell, the Layup chair was designed to explore future possibilities of 3D plywood forming technology, initiated as a part of the 2025 Design Forum hosted by wood molding expert Becker Brackel. The chair is simple yet incredibly deceptive. It looks like it has volume, but it’s nothing more than a piece of bent plywood, contorted to the max to give you something that doesn’t look like it was made from a sheet-based material.
Designer:
“For the past century, pushing the limits of wood bending has been a perennial topic of conversation between designers and industry,” said Martell. “In this spirit, I took the opportunity to propose a technically ambitious lounge chair aimed at carrying this tradition forward into a new era. Layup optimistically envisions a complex multi-part 3D veneer construction, with each of the chairs molded plywood components seamlessly joined together to form a singular sculptural gesture,” he added.
The bafflingly beautiful chair looks like it’s made from a single sheet of bent plywood, but in reality, features 3 pieces of bent plywood seamlessly attached to each other to create the illusion of a single sheet. The three parts involve the seat itself, along with a front leg and back leg component. They join at the top and frontal edges, with a finishing so immaculate you don’t see a kink in the surface or even the hint of an edge line. Make it even more conscientiously, and you can even create a chair where the wood grain blends into itself, completely hiding the seam.
As current technology stands, such a chair is challenging, if not impossible. That being said, Martell is currently exploring alternate materials and production methods in an effort to realize a similar design. It’s totally conceivable that in perhaps the next few years, the Layup chair won’t be a concept – it’ll be a mainstay at design museums.
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