The winning chair, designed by Charles Brill

A Material - A Team of Students - and the opportunity to make something real...

Wilsonart has a long history of working with designers to help their concepts come to life. Over the past seven years the company has sponsored many young designers during this process. In 2005, Wilsonart decided to evolve that program one step further.

As many of you know, Wilsonart's ads in several leading design trade publications each May (in honor of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair) have featured a single chair which incorporates the icon of the laminate chip. That ICFF tradition was married with the ad program for the first time last year when Wilsonart approached Parsons School of Design about hosting a student design competition to create the chair featured in the ad. This year, they continued this program with the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI.

The program began last Fall, with the Furniture Design Department at RISD. Working alongside professor Lothar Windels, Wilsonart representatives taught the students about laminate: its history, technical capabilities, the current market trends, and sustainability issues, even fabrication. Students were given a list of criteria. For example, the chair had to be buildable, functional and have a strong visual presence. Afterall, it was for an ad, not a living room! Over the semester, concepts were generated, discussed and refined. In the end, a jury including the advertising agency art director,

a magazine editor, a design historian and a team from Wilsonart selected the winning design which will be presented at the ICFF this month.

We would like to congratulate Charles Brill for designing a chair that looked like no other we had ever seen. We hope you enjoy it and look forward to future designs from different design schools.

These students also participated in the class:

• Ann Adams
• Rozit Ardit
• Katherine Elliot
• Joel Green
• Jill Rossi
• Hyun Yoo

Design by Hyun Yoo

Design by Jill Rossi

Design by Rozit Arditi

Design by Ann Adams

Design by Katherine Elliot

About the Winner: The Nest Chair by Charles Brill

The focus of the "Nest Chair" was to create a 3-D surface using a 2-D material through a process of layering and weaving. From this random nest structure a sense of protection is created through the cradling of the body in a network of laminate strips that include the Wilsonart sample chip shape. Charles’s interests are present in this chair, from his knowledge of materials and their aesthetic relationships, to the complex formal qualities that challenge the structural nature of known materials such as counter top laminate.

Design by Joel Green