Central Saint Martins graduate Yeyang Liao has created Coffin chair, an item of furniture that the owner can be cremated in after they die.
Liao bent strips of wood in a set of 12 slightly different moulds using precise digital moulding techniques to form the seat of the chair. The moulded wood mimics the curvature of a traditional coffin.
In order for the coffin to be cremated, the chair is made solely from wood, without any metal components.

Coffin chair can be used as a regular piece of furniture whilst the user is alive. After they die, family members can transform the seat into a casing for the dead body before cremation.
The base of the chair slides open to the length of a human body, which causes the bent wooden elements to unfurl like a spring, leaving a series of small openings in a wooden sheath that surrounds the body. "The spring structure not only has the function of extension, but also has the symbolic meaning of a long life," explained Liao.

According to Liao, the Chinese government is aiming to implement a comprehensive policy of cremation by forbidding the practice of burial.
As part of the Green Funeral movement implemented by the government in 2018, the national goal is 50 per cent green ceremonies by 2020.

The designer says that many people have had their coffins forcibly removed from their homes. Coffin chair respects the ritual of preparing your own coffin, something that Liao feels is important to the elder generation.

"We are crea...