After the robot has stopped
The printed outline is an obvious place to begin looking at Chubby. Kooij’s own making account adds something less obvious: human work remains important even though the chair is printed.1
That detail changes the story. Robotic extrusion provides the body, but a usable piece of furniture also has surfaces, colour, components and a route into someone’s room. A production method does not make those other questions disappear.
The studio identifies recycled plastic and pigment and describes the technique as robot extrusion together with handcraft. The linked specification also lists steel fixtures and felt. These are useful reminders that the finished chair is an organised object, rather than only a deposited line.12
The front and back have different voices
The product account describes a glossier front and a softer matt finish on the back. Turning around the chair can therefore change how light meets the surface, even before its outline changes very much.1
One surface catches a distinct highlight; another can make the same colour seem quieter. These are differences in how a material is presented to the eye and the hand. They make finishing part of the design’s character.
Kooij also describes adding pigment during extrusion and the variation that results between chairs. A shared colour name need not produce an entirely uniform surface. The process can leave differences within the family.1
A printed chair can arrive in parts
The current FAQ says Chubby is delivered as an upper part and a lower leg part, assembled with four hex bolts. That is a concrete distinction between a printed design and a chair delivered as one seamless object.1
Assembly adds a different kind of work to extrusion. Components have to meet, and the furniture has to travel before someone uses it. The visible printed body cannot, by itself, tell the whole story of that journey.
This does not make every old example’s construction identical to today’s. It gives the current studio account a precise scope, while leaving earlier object histories open to their own documentation.
The hand remains in the account
The studio webpage gives 2012 and the specification gives 2013. Keeping that disagreement explicit avoids borrowing certainty from a familiar design name.12
The more useful certainty here concerns the breadth of making. Chubby brings extrusion, finishing, colour and assembly into the same chair. The robot has colleagues, and looking at the surfaces is one way to notice their work.
