seongyong lee: plytube stool

‘plytube’ stools

korean designer seongyong lee has previously participated in our designboom exhibitions ‘seoul design essence’ and ‘asia now’. now he presents his ‘plytube stool’ as part of the [d3] design talents at the imm cologne 2011. 

this seating design uses a similar principal to that of making paper tubes. instead of paper though, lee uses sheets of wood veneer to create tubes. in this way, he presents this technique as a new means of ‘tubing’ wood, which includes an additional process in which to harden the tubes. the composition of ‘plytubes’ allow them to be both light and strong at the same time. overall, the stool weighs 820g, despite its size and rigid structure.

for manufacturing purposes, the color, diameter, thickness, type of wood of the tubes could be customized and used for application for architectural purposes, as well as everyday pieces such as furniture.

‘plytube’ stools on display at imm cologne furniture fair 2011 image © designboom

detail of the stool’s seat and plytube legs

seat detail

up close of the intersection plytubes that make up the supporting legs of the stool image © designboom

the intersecting hollow tubes image © designboom

plytubes ready to be used

tubes cut to various lengths

sanding the tubes

demonstrating the strength of the plytube

plytube experiments

more experiments on using the veneer to form tubes

mallet

seong yong lee image © designboom

lee has also been a shortlisted winner of our designboom competitions including his: ‘floater’ cutlery in the designboom competition dining in 2015 and ‘static table set’ in the designboom competition ‘premio vico magistretti’