Design is always a balancing act, and the best industrial designers are experts at finding that sweet spot between originality, practicality, cost, quality and the million other considerations that inevitably come into play with a new product. But recently we've seen several projects that perform a literal balancing act—designs that seem to defy gravity, plus one where the parts are ingeniously arranged to allow for one-handed operation.
Dragonfly chair photos by Diego Alta
Designers often look to nature for inspiration, but even so, the dragonfly seems like an unlikely starting point for the making of a chair. As the Milan-based designer Odo Fioravanti notes, the insects' bodies "are characterized by an imbalance in weight distribution between the front legs and their extended tail." So too is Fioravanti's Dragonfly chair for Segis, a cantilever form with four legs joined at the front of the seat. It features an injection-molded polypropylene shell with steel legs—and the structure succeeds thanks to a hidden U-shaped element under the seat that bolsters its resistance.
Early sketch models
The first prototype
     |