Popular Mechanics — Building a chair from a single sheet of wood

Popular Mechanics is always working on cool stuff and this was no exception. I spent the day with John Heida at the School of Visual Arts here in New York City. His first paragraph in the article explained the story well so I’ll just paste it below. But be sure to check it out in it’s entirety by clicking here.

I built this Eames-like chair without touching a single traditional woodworking tool. No, it’s not because I’m some kind of Luddite. I just love the immediacy of rendering a chair with 3D modeling software and then cutting out the parts with a CNC machine. Everything snaps together like flat-pack furniture, but without the cheesy fasteners—just mechanically sound through tenons and lap joints. The manufacturing process takes 2 hours.

Many thanks to photo editor Allyson Torrisi