The Seahorse chair by kiwi designer Andrew Roberts represents a personal endeavor to explore design as an unrestricted and liberating form of artistic expression.

Design Team

Designer: Andrew Roberts

Photographer: Jacob Hawkins

The Seahorse is an exploration of the fusion between sculpture, emotion, and design.

Inspired by the likes of Tony Cragg and Louise Bourgeois, Roberts set out to explore how designed objects, made through meticulous biomorphic imitation can engage with users as a physical and visual sensation.

One of the desires for the project was the create a piece that while having the capability to be manufactured on scale, was an object that demanded attention, went completely off-trend, and provoked conversation within audiences.

Designed for rotational molding, The Seahorse is conceptualized as a furniture piece made from waste streams of polyethylene products such as toys, plastic furniture, and industrial containers to name a few.
The design looks to embrace the imperfections and inconsistencies of recycled materiality and implement them into a highly precious artifact.

To execute the biological intricacies of its real-world inspiration, special techniques were used to create the mathematically driven form. The employment of parametric design (done through Grasshopper 3D) helped to translate the biological complexity of the natural inspiration into a manufacturable piece of furniture. What eventuated as a highly refined object was backed by many hours of research into the mathematical understanding of the form and biological engineering of a seahorse.

As a representation of unbridled design exploration, the Seahorse stands apart as an entirely unprecedented object, free from convention and imbued with unparalleled uniqueness.

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