That’s the idea Chair Club now carries forward, open to the whole world. Taekhan treats each drawing not as a blueprint but as a starting point, finding the most important idea inside it and resolving the structure, materials, and proportions around it. The finished chair ends up belonging to both of them, the participant’s imagination and the designer’s interpretation in one object.

Anyone who has ever imagined a chair can join. Submit your drawing at chairclub.net.

Read the full interview below.

Chair Club grew out of Chair for Kids, which you did with children in Cambodia in 2025. What was that experience like, and what made you want to open it up to people around the world?

Chair for Kids was a project I carried out with children in Cambodia in 2025. I asked the children to freely imagine and draw the chairs they would like to sit on, and I turned some of their drawings into actual chairs.

What impressed me most about working with the children was their freedom of imagination when thinking about chairs. When designing a chair, they didn’t really consider whether it could actually be built, whether it would be structurally stable, or whether it would be comfortable to sit on. Instead, they naturally drew the chairs they imagined and wanted.

Looking at their drawings, I especially came to realize that being able to draw well and having a good idea are two completely different things. I found some very interesting ideas even in drawings that were extremely simple or technically rough.

Because of this experience, I didn’t want to limit the project to the children I worked with in Cambodia. I became curious about what kinds of chairs people from different countries, ages, and backgrounds might imagine if they were given the opportunity to draw their own chairs.

That was how Chair Club began. I wanted to expand the experience beyond a specific group of people or a particular place, and create a project where anyone can imagine and participate by creating their own chair.

What is it about the chair specifically? Of all the objects people could draw, why did the chair become the center of the project?

Since I started working in design, I have continued to make chairs. In fact, I have been asked the question, “Why chairs?” several times by different media outlets and in interviews. But to be honest, I don’t think I can say that I have found one clear answer to that question yet. I would rather say that I am still on a journey to find the answer.

What I have come to feel through making chairs is that a chair is not simply an object made for someone to sit on. A chair is made to seat a person, but at the same time, I feel that I am also seating the stories I want to tell within it.

A chair is also one of the most familiar objects in our everyday lives. Almost everyone has experienced sitting on a chair and understands what a chair is for. Because of this familiarity, I think people can easily project their own experiences and imagination onto a chair without needing any additional explanation.

At the same time, a chair is an object that can be imagined in countless different ways. Its most basic function is to provide a place to sit, but while maintaining that function, its form, size, structure, materials, and many other aspects can be changed infinitely.

For me, this makes the chair an object that holds both familiarity and possibility. It is something everyone can easily approach, while also providing a space to contain their own experiences, imagination, and stories.

Chair Club also started from this quality of the chair. By asking people to draw their own chairs, I wanted to see how differently people could imagine and tell stories about the same familiar everyday object: the chair.

How does a drawing actually become a chair? Walk us through the process, from interpreting the drawing to choosing materials and building it. How do you decide what to stay faithful to and where to fill in the gaps?

First, I look at the drawing and try to understand what I think the most important idea in it is.

In some drawings, the form itself may be the most important element. In others, it might be a particular detail, function, or idea about the material. Some drawings are very detailed, while others consist of only a few simple lines.

I don’t try to reproduce everything in the drawing exactly as it is. I don’t think of the drawing as a kind of blueprint, but rather as a starting point that contains an idea.

From there, I consider the structure and balance, size and proportions, materials, and methods of construction, so that the idea can become a chair that someone can actually sit on. In the case of the Chair for Kids project, the children also made small clay models of their chairs, which allowed me to develop and construct the final chairs more easily based on those models.

I think the important question is how much of the original idea I should preserve, while also deciding how much I should intervene as a designer.

If I reproduce everything exactly as it is, the process can become simply a matter of translating a drawing into a three-dimensional object. On the other hand, if I intervene too much, the original idea of the person who made the drawing can disappear.

Ultimately, the finished chair is a result of both the participant’s imagination and my interpretation as a designer.

You’ve said the project values original ideas and imagination over technically well-executed drawings. What do you look for when selecting which drawings get made?

The most important thing I look for is whether there is an idea and a story behind the drawing.

How well someone can draw is not important to me. In fact, sometimes a technically very simple drawing can contain an incredibly interesting idea.

When I look at a drawing, I’m not simply asking, “What does this chair look like?” I’m more interested in asking, “Why did they draw this chair?”

For example, if a chair has an unusual form, the form itself can be interesting, but I may be even more interested in the reason behind that form and the imagination contained within it. If someone adds an unexpected function to a chair, there may be a story behind why they imagined that function. I also find drawings interesting when someone expresses their own experiences, memories, or things they like through the form of a chair.

I’m particularly interested in drawings where the idea and the story are connected to each other. The kind of drawing that makes me think, “I’ve never imagined a chair like this before,” while at the same time making me wonder, “Why did they draw it this way?”

I also think it is important to consider whether that story can lead to another story when the drawing is turned into a real chair. I look at whether the idea and story contained in the drawing have the potential to develop into something new through the process of making.

In the end, I don’t select drawings based on their level of technical execution. I look for the ideas and stories within them, the curiosity and imagination they create, and the possibility that they can develop into a physical chair.

How does Chair Club work logistically? Where are the chairs built, how often do you make them, and what happens to a chair after it’s finished? Do they go to the people who drew them?

Chair Club is an ongoing project rather than one with a fixed deadline or a set number of chairs.

People can freely draw and submit their own chairs through Chair Club, and I continue to collect these drawings as part of a growing collection.

From the submissions, I select drawings that I would like to develop into actual chairs, and then I work out the appropriate way to make each one based on the individual drawing.

In the short term, I plan to build the chairs myself in Korea this year and present them as an exhibition.

Once a chair is completed, it becomes part of the Chair Club collection together with the original drawing. If a chair is commercially sold, the participant who created the original drawing will also receive a commission from the sale.

What’s the long-term vision for the project? You mention building a growing collection of drawings and chairs, where do you hope it goes from here?

First, I hope Chair Club will continue to grow into a collection where people’s different ideas and imaginations can accumulate over time.

If hundreds or even thousands of people contribute their own chairs, rather than just one or two people, I think it could become an interesting archive showing just how differently people can imagine the same object: the chair.

But I don’t want the project to end as an online collection of drawings. I want some of these drawings to continue being developed into actual chairs, and in the future, I would like to present the drawings and physical chairs together through exhibitions, publications, workshops, and other forms of presentation.

I also hope that Chair Club will not be limited to a particular country or age group. Chair for Kids began with children in Cambodia, but Chair Club is now a project that anyone around the world can participate in, regardless of age.

What I hope to achieve through the project is to have people look at the many different chairs collected through Chair Club and see an ordinary object that has become so familiar to us in a new way.


Images courtesy of Taekhan Yun