Primary Research in Mass Seating
I have decided to conduct some research into different examples of mass seating. I am mainly looks at the designs and the overall function of the chair. Hopefully this will allow me to develop further with my initial designs.
To begin with I decided to email the Amex football stadium. At this moment in time they have yet to get back to me, however I shall chase this up because it will be interesting and useful as a source of research. Most importantly, it would be a perfect example of seating that copes with a lot of use. I will be looking at things like materials and designs to cope with the many users.
Example of St Bartholomew's Church and the vast amount of seats.
Above is a picture of a lecture theater in the checkland building at Brighton University.
I wanted to get a feel for how the lecture theater seats catered to so many people but also I wanted to see the overall design and functionality of the chairs.
Design wise it is safe to say that these examples of seating would not be appropriate for the church, even though these chairs seem as if they can be moved easily they are in fact fixed to a base and would need to be unscrewed. If this style of seating was used in churches it would not be very practical because it would take a long time to remove the chairs one by one. Although the brief does not state anything about time I know I need to think practical about the product that I create and because of this, this concept would not be suited for this scenario.
Despite of this the chair is very comfortable, on the back of the chair and the seat is some sort of padded foam or cushion which makes it suitable for my audience. I think the colour although very bold could potentially go quite well against dark stained wood so this is a colour that I think would look nice within the surroundings. Through some of my research so far I have in fact noticed that there have been a few blue upholstery seats with similar colours to this.
I wanted to get a feel for how the lecture theater seats catered to so many people but also I wanted to see the overall design and functionality of the chairs.
Design wise it is safe to say that these examples of seating would not be appropriate for the church, even though these chairs seem as if they can be moved easily they are in fact fixed to a base and would need to be unscrewed. If this style of seating was used in churches it would not be very practical because it would take a long time to remove the chairs one by one. Although the brief does not state anything about time I know I need to think practical about the product that I create and because of this, this concept would not be suited for this scenario.
Despite of this the chair is very comfortable, on the back of the chair and the seat is some sort of padded foam or cushion which makes it suitable for my audience. I think the colour although very bold could potentially go quite well against dark stained wood so this is a colour that I think would look nice within the surroundings. Through some of my research so far I have in fact noticed that there have been a few blue upholstery seats with similar colours to this.
Similar to most of the folding chairs that I have researched they rely on some sort of metal mechanisms and components that allows the chair to move up and down. Is metal the best material for this? Does it have to fold by going up and down? This is something I would like to look into further.
Other examples of Mass seating
This slide show below just shows a few examples of other examples of mass seating. I looked into theaters and cinemas, and each seat seems to use very similar concepts. I know that this example of seating would not be right for my product and it's environment but I think the principles of how they function can be transferable - for example the way the chair folds.
What I have found useful as well from this research is experimenting with the shapes of the chairs, each shape is slightly different whether it being the back, the seat or even the arms, the shape does obviously contribute to comfort and most of the chairs are rounded at the back, or curved inwards to support the users back. It is something that i would like to experiment with at a later date.