Milan 08: shown at That’s Design! in Zona Tortona last month, What Can You Bring to the Table is a collection of five chairs where each component was designed in isolation without any knowledge of what the other parts would be like.

Each of the five chairs is created in response to a word: vain (above), voluptuous (below), awkward, vicious and androgynous.

The project was inspired by a children’s game where each person draws part of a character before folding the paper down and passing it onto the next person, who adds the next feature without knowing what has gone before or after.

31 students from the industrial design course at Lund University in Sweden took part in the project.

Above: awkward. Here’s some text from the students:
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What will happen if you let 31 industrial design students work together in a project without knowing what the others are doing? Inspired by the folded sketch, a child’s game where you draw one part of a character not knowing how the previous or next person will draw theirs.

The aim was to design five chairs where each chair in the exhibition represents one characteristic. The inspirational words vain, awkward, voluptuous (above), androgynous and vicious (below) were extracted from the sketch and free for interpretation.

What can you bring to the table is a group project where no one has to compromise. Each part is designed independently without influence from the other participants.

Below: androgynous