Martijn Rigters will be showing a system that utilizes an unlikely combination of mass production and hand-driven crafts to produce personalized chairs at Milan Design Week 2012.

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Rigters is a third year furniture design student at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in the Netherlands.

During the Salone Del Mobile 2012 he will produce seating using an innovative flexible molding technique, based on mass production technology, to create made-to-measure designed foam chairs.

In Rigters' view, "mass production has its benefits in terms of efficiency, but also results in every object being unpleasantly identical, lacking charm and ultimately, not contributing to what is key to design: individuality and personality, both by designer as well as possessors."

To overcome the paradox, Rigters developed the flexible molding technique. "Using the human body as a living mold; visitors will be asked to co-create the seats by becoming part of the installation."

"After a short production time of fifteen minutes, a fully fabricated seat is shaped and designed." A series of limited edition chairs will be produced on the spot at Studio Iroko, Via Voghera 11b in Milan from April 17 to 22, 2012.

+ martijnrigters.com