Linia Lounge Chair
From bent brass to production reality.
My contribution to this project wasn't the final product. It was the prototype work that helped get it there.
During the summer of 2020 I joined the Forms+Surfaces team as a prototype developer, supporting the development of the Linia Lounge Chair under Director of Design Adam Tripp. Working across both form and function models, my role was to get physical prototypes in hand quickly so the design team could react to the chair as a real object rather than a drawing.
The Brief
Develop a series of physical prototypes to validate the Linia Lounge Chair's visual language and ergonomic performance before committing to production tooling. Each prototype needed to answer a specific question: does this geometry read correctly at full scale, and does it hold up under a person's weight at real-world seat angles?
Form Prototyping
Starting from technical drawings provided by Adam, I built early form models to explore the visual language of the chair. This involved cutting brass rods to precise dimensions and using a rod bending jig to achieve the curves defining the seat and backrest. Joints were resolved using 3D printed connectors, assembled to the rods to evaluate proportion, line, and overall aesthetic direction.
The goal at this stage was to get geometry into the room quickly, so the design team could react to the chair as a physical object rather than a drawing.
Function Prototyping and Ergonomic Testing
Once the form direction was resolved, we moved into load-bearing prototypes to test the chair structurally and ergonomically. I built functional models capable of supporting a person's full weight, which we used to evaluate seat angles, backrest rake, and overall comfort across different body types.
Each round of testing fed directly back into the CAD, and we repeated the cycle of build, test, and revise until both the ergonomics and the aesthetics were resolved together.
The Outcome
The Linia chair is now part of the Forms+Surfaces commercial product catalog. My work on this project spans the full prototype arc from first bent-rod study model to final ergonomic validation, giving me firsthand experience in the iterative, material-driven process that takes a designed object into production.
Technical drawings from Director of Design Adam Tripp served as the starting point for each prototype cycle.
Form and function prototypes at the same stage of development, showing how the two tracks converged.
The production Linia Lounge Chair. Photo courtesy Forms+Surfaces.
Prototype Developer · SolidWorks, rod bending, 3D printing · Supervisor: Adam Tripp, Director of Design · Product: Linia Lounge Chair, Forms+Surfaces · Summer 2020