Like a good pair of jeans, the Tamable Chair only becomes more comfortable with wear-and-tear.
Styrofoam is like an improvised shapeshifter. It’s used for anything from packing material to insulation to play products. Composed of 98% air, styrofoam is well known for its shock-absorbent properties, making it the ideal choice for packing material. The rest of styrofoam is made up of closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam (XPS), a type of dense craft building material that gives styrofoam its rigid appearance and stiff impression. The buoyant nature of styrofoam and its dense, rigid makeup inspired Seoul-based Fountain Studio to design the Tamable Chair, an ergonomic, conceptual chair entirely made from styrofoam.
The Tamable Chair maintains the shape of a traditional lounge chair for optimal comfort. Over time, the Tamable Chair’s surface morphs to different seated positions and becomes more comfortable with continued use. Styrofoam is composed of 98% air, making it the ideal packing material. Styrofoam tends to contort and warp when pressure is applied to its surface.
Even as kids, poking at sheets of styrofoam taught us that the depressions our fingerprints make don’t rise. Fountain studio used that insight when developing the Tamable Chair to allow the styrofoam surface to adapt to different body shapes and seated positions.
Fountain Studio set out to create a lounge chair that naturally morphs its outermost surface to adapt to different seated positions. Finding the ideal building material, Fountain Studio’s Tamable Chair is made from styrofoam for its tendency to contort and bend when pressure is applied, giving the chair an adaptable and lightweight comfort that gets better with use.
Fountain Studio considered other buoyant building materials before settling on styrofoam. The Tamable Chair is entirely made from expandable polystyrene that was put through a CNC milling machine to give the block of styrofoam some stylistic ridges and a fully-formed chair shape. Like a good pair of jeans, the Tamable Chair only becomes more comfortable with wear-and-tear.
CNC milling techniques were used to give Tamable Chair stylistic ridges and a unique shape. The Tamable Chair morphs its surface and overall shape with each new seated position—the ridges level out to become a squeaky, flattened surface more similar to that of traditional chairs.
Designer: Fountain Studio
When sitting on Tamable Chair, the chair’s seat forms a depression that remains even after you leave the chair.
Over time, the ridges level out and form a squeaky flattened surface.
The more one sits in the Tamable Chair, the more familiar it becomes, passing from rigid indentations to a smooth surface.
