Maniwa City in Okayama Prefecture, located in the western part of Japan, is famous as a place of origin for the popular Japanese cypress and cedar trees in Japan. This time, we designed a chair using only Maniwa’s Japanese cypress.

Pop cloud, the name of this chair, is a combination of 7 rotating parts (5 types in total) made from a solid Japanese cypress log with a wood lathe machine. The rotating part is a wooden club-shaped one that smoothly changes from a sphere to a rod-like shape, and another is a gourd-shaped one with spherical ends. Because it is made of solid wood, the wood grain appears beautifully like ripples and contour lines.

In the production process, while repeatedly discussing with the craftsman, we used 3D CAD Rhinoceros based on the maximum size that can be produced with a wood lathe machine, and repeatedly examined the size, angle, overlapping conditions, hole positions, etc., and created a two-dimensional drawing. The craftsman carved and drilled holes based on the drawings, and dealt with cracking, drying, and shrinkage by providing “play” because it is solid wood. The method of assembly is to makes four holes in the largest wooden club-shaped rotating part. And insert the other rotating parts into the holes. In addition, by fitting a gourd-shaped rotating part into the inserted gap, the overall balance is maintained. The rotating parts gathered in this way are like clouds that have jumped out of the sea of clouds in the mountains of Maniwa City, Okayama Prefecture, where they are produced. The aim was to create a form that would be fun to assemble and would induce various postures, not just sitting.