Project: Humberstone Chair

Client: Independent Project

Category: Seating / Dining Furniture

In the middle of the Atacama Desert — one of the driest places on Earth — Humberstone was once home to nearly 3,700 people. Workers from Chile, Peru and Bolivia came to extract saltpeter, the white gold that fertilized agricultural lands across America and Europe.

Life was brutal. Shifts lasted over 12 hours. The desert offered nothing. And yet, someone built a theatre. Someone brought furniture from England. The buildings were Georgian and Art Deco — architectural styles that belonged to another world entirely.

That radical contrast — between the hostility of the landscape and the stubborn human need for beauty and dignity — is what this chair explores.

Humberstone was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005. By 1960, it was a ghost town.

The chair translates that same tension into material and process. A turned solid wood structure — a technique rooted in traditional woodworking craft — meets a molded plywood monocoque shell, a method borrowed from industrial manufacturing. Two systems from different eras, resolved into a single lightweight and structurally robust silhouette.

Old craft. New process. One chair.