Do people care how their furniture is made? They might, if you showed them. A recent exhibition put on by Proof of Concept, a design platform that explores production methods, revealed the prototyping process behind David Irwin's Baleen Lounge Chair. It shows the public the unfamiliar-to-them stage where you have to manually create affordable stand-ins for industrial processes in order to produce an initial, well, proof of concept.

Irwin, a Northern Irish industrial designer and Assistant Professor at Northumbria University's School of Design, explains what you're looking at:

Pressing

"Compression moulding at furniture scale beginning with the mould itself: an MDF prototype standing in for a future solid aluminium industrial tool. [The] layers of MDF [were] painstakingly assembled to form a two-part mould capable of withstanding the pressure required to press a PET chair shell."

"PET (Polyester) is pressed under heat and pressure. The mould defines curvature, stiffness and surface quality. Structure and form are inseparable outcomes of the mould."

Trimming

"Without a water jet cutter, the production process typically used for accurately cutting the final PET shell, a manual approach had to be employed."

Through April 18th the mold, pressing and resulting chair are being exhibited as part of "Proof of Concept #3: Mould" at London's Aram Gallery.