Header: Aisha Olasewere, Elijah Ezralow, Lucia Quintanar
Terranthro is a lawn lounge chair with a shape that rises and falls in curves, cut from sapele wood and supported by aluminium frames. Built at Stanford University by four design students, Aisha Olasewere, Elijah Ezralow, Lucia Quintanar and Alexander Lee, the chair was born from the simple vision of wishing there was a proper place to sit outside on campus.
Finished just thirteen days before they graduated, Terranthro has since won the “Garden furniture” category at the SIT Furniture Design Awards 2026.
The inspiration behind the chair
The curves come from the swirling contours and layers of the topography of Northern California, which the team spent a long time studying. From this first phase, they worked out how the earth’s own curvature might be turned into a three-dimensional object. Noticing a lack of information in their field, the students borrowed principles from landscape architecture. This gave the group a way of thinking about ground, slope and planting that their own area does not usually supply.
Before drawing anything, they also spoke to external advisers and to people around the university about how they spend time outdoors, since they wanted to know what brings someone to sit down in the open.
“We sketched, debated, and prototyped in a circular rhythm to merge our love for the outdoors with our university’s landscape.”
The design team, writing for the SIT Furniture Design Award
Sapele and aluminium
Sapele is a hardwood from West and Central Africa, similar to mahogany in colour and in the ribboned grain that shows when it is quarter-sawn. It is a common choice for garden furniture, since it is very resistant to rain and sun without needing much looking after. To keep the project as ecologically sound as possible, the team sourced their wood from sustainably managed forests. After treatment and shaping, the team set the wood on aluminium frames, a metal that does not rust and is able to hold its finish outdoors for a long time.
Designed around the tools that made it
The team were careful to create a design that could be achieved with the machines found in their university’s workshop. We can say, then, that the designers used an engineering approach in which the machines and processes available to you shape the form of the object. The form dictates the order in which the thing has to be made.
Project information
Lead Designers: Aisha Olasewere, Elijah Ezralow, Lucia Quintanar
Other Designer: Alexander Lee
School: Stanford University
Photography: Aisha Olasewere, Elijah Ezralow, Lucia Quintanar
Location: Stanford, California, United States
Date: June 2025
