jaago

A 10 week project in early 2025.

Winter 2025 was a period of me waking up. Me realizing how what I value as a person shows up in my designs and I’ve seen these changes reflected in nearly all my project work in the past ten weeks. I’m someone who wants to design with my community and honor traditions and stories of communities I am a part of. This chair was me taking inspiration from a chair with a questionable history while honoring a centuries old weaving practice, charpai, that many artisans in the subcontinent still explore today.

As someone who often uses music as a source of inspiration and comfort, it would be remiss for me to not involve the artform in this project as well. Jaago, Hindi for awaken, is a song I’ve been listening to for months now in which the artist urges his listeners to wake up and start the process of self-realization. And this chair feels like a physical manifestation of the journey of self-realization I am on right now.

Thus, jaago.

Materials: walnut, maple, nylon rope

Challenge:

Design a collapsible chair that:

• assembles and disassembles within one minute

• is under forty pounds

• within three cubic feet in volume

Conceptualization:

My initial brainstorming was through type. I started with the letter “K” to see if there were any profiles I felt drawn to. The exercise made me realize I needed to prioritize a side profile I visually enjoyed while finalizing my design. Funnily enough, the side profile of my final design ended up being quite close to “K.”

I also took a lot of inspiration from chairs from past chapters of life and chairs I saw frequently.

Small Scale Prototype

Manufacturing