FOAM PARTY | Martijn Rigters

seat yourself

Martijn Rigters is a third year furniture design student at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in the Netherlands.

During the Salone Internazionale Del Mobile 2012 he will produce seats by utilizing an unlikely combination of mass production and hand-driven crafts.

In his view, mass production has its benefits in terms of efficiency, but also results in every object being unpleasantly identical, lacking charm and ultimately, not contributing to what is key to design: individuality and personality, both by designer as well as possessors.

To overcome the paradox, Rigters developed an innovative flexible molding technique based on mass production technology, to create made-to-measure designed foam seats. Standardisation is thereby combined with differentiation.

After a short production time of fifteen minutes, a fully fabricated seat is shaped and designed. Using the human body as a living mold; visitors will be asked to co-create the seats by becoming part of the installation.

A series of limited edition chairs will be produced on the spot.