Marija Puipaitė shapes Embracing Touch seats with the outline of her legs
Lithuanian designer Marija Puipaitė used the curves of her legs in different resting positions to generate the forms of these seats created for her Design Academy Eindhoven graduate project.
Embracing Touch is a collection of three seats formed around the silhouette of Marija Puipaitė's legs.
In each case, the designer took the profile of the backs of her legs and the space between the floor, and extruded the section around 360 degrees to create a solid shape.
The resulting furniture pieces fit perfectly to her body when seated, whichever direction she is facing.
"It's a collection of sculptural seats. It's also a method of creating shapes using the body," Puipaitė told Dezeen. "These objects could be customised and function as an abstract monument for a certain person in a personal or public space."
Driven by a desire to experiment with materials and processes, Puipaitė made each design using different material combinations.
The first seat is formed using birch plywood shaped with Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machinery, and the second from plaster, sand and silicone set in a running mould.
She created the third by spinning wool over a medium-density fibreboard (MDF) structure and applying resin at the end.
The project is intended partly as a commentary on how much of themselves designers leave in the things they design.
"I hope people will relate to the idea that there is a lot of personality and intimacy behind every design and art object. The creators leave their essence in their works," said Puipaitė.
"Within my works I would like to arouse ideas about physicality, how it affects us, what we think and how we appreciate our own and other people's bodies."
Embracing Touch was presented during Dutch Design Week 2014 as part of the graduate show at Design Academy Eindhoven, from which Puipaitė graduated with a master's degree in Contextual Design.
Other graduate projects on show this year included a range of textiles embedded with mood-altering scents and a chair that turns the human body into a computer mouse.