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SEATING SPECIAL
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO DESIGN A CHAIR?
When “school seating” was first suggested to Simon Dennehy as a possible research area for his Masters in Design, he was, initially at least, somewhat underwhelmed by the idea. When he started visiting schools, his perspective changed.
After graduating from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2003, Simon Dennehy was looking for an area of expertise for his Masters in which he could develop a body of research and build his career. As a former competitive road cyclist with a passion for bike components and human physiology, focusing on human movement in sports appealed, but a chat with his college lecturer, Dr Gearóid O’Conchubhair (who, for his PhD, designed a brilliant, bi-angular ergonomic chair for orchestral musicians), pointed Simon in the direction of school furniture. Calls to action from ergonomic journals for better seating solutions for schoolchildren had gone unheeded, and, at the time, there was almost nothing of note available on the market. Underwhelmed by the design potential, Simon reluctantly began looking into it and began to appreciate just how widespread and serious the issue of poor posture in schools was. From the moment he stepped into his first classroom as a researcher and saw how poorly the students were sitting and working, he was hooked. Here, Simon explains the story behind the development of the RAY chair.
