Blog

STOOL – 1A

by GUTIERREZ STUDIOS, 11/06/2014

2014 is the year of Product at the Studios!  We are dedicating any spare moment to refining our current product lines and developing many more.  Curtis Adamo, one of our designers, had an idea for an elegantly simple bar stool so we built one, and then another, and another.  The genesis of the 1A stool started as a quick orthographic sketch Curtis generated during one of our weekly project meetings. 

We wanted to develop a residential friendly bar stool to complement our current line of stools. The design’s main objective was to keep the total number of components low for both aesthetic and budgetary reasons. The legs and footrest are made from just two lengths of 5/8” steel round bar. The seat and seat back are formed out of one laser cut sheet of 11 gage steel.  From the initial sketch Curtis jumped directly into AutoCAD to verify the ergonomics and scale.

From there it was time to build 3D model in AutoCAD and put our new 3D printer to work making a ¼ scale model. The first 3D print was a total bust! The proportions that looked great on screen were just wrong when rendered in the real physical world. So with some minor changes in proportion we made a new scale model. We reviewed the design and started making changes, printed a few new iterations, critiqued, then repeated process a few times. We finally arrived at a working design and moved into fabricating a full scale prototype in steel.

The first prototype was reasonably comfortable save for the location of the footrest and seat angle. The second iteration was better still, but not quite there. With the third we hit the mark on comfort. We’re now about ready to fabricate the pre-production prototype. This version incorporates all of the aesthetic revisions we’ve made along the way. What will result is a very lean and modern bar stool that you will enjoy sitting with your favorite food or beverage!