greg ball: subsonic teenager subwoofer chair

‘subsonic chair’ all images courtesy of greg ball

back in 2005, canadian designer john greg ball created the ‘subsonic’ chair‘ which became a shortlisted entry in the designboom competition ‘teenage furniture’.

since then, ball has developed the chair further at the insistence of his students at SAIT polytechnic in calgary, alberta. tapping into the behaviours of teenagers, ball originally designed the chair based on the tendencies of youth to play video games and music very loudly. still under the prototype phase, the updated design features two 16-inch subwoofers in the chair’s structure which emit a strong, thundering bass tone. having the capacity to connect to an iPod, MP3 player or gaming system, ‘subsonic’ gives users a full range of sound.

detail of the subwoofer

front view

greg ball talks about his design