Included works:

1. Acrylic Stool, acrylic

2. Indoor Swing, wood

3. Sconce Light Fixture, plastic, imitation gold leaf

4. Gown With Fan-Shaped Accent and Two-Piece Lace-Up Dress with Accompanying Collar, illustration in colored pencil

5. Threshold, ink pen on paper

6. Wallpaper, digital

I find my interests in mathematics, minimalism, and sustainability reflected in the design of these works.

It is said sitting is the new smoking. With this in mind, I intentionally design Acrylic Stool (1) with a sloping seat. My concept is a “temporary perch” that will prompt users to circulate about the room rather than lounge excessively in a plush seat. I was inspired when one day I found myself sitting a bit precariously on the edge of the kitchen counter. It seemed like a fine seat to me; it gave me enough grounding to gather my thoughts and just the right amount of energy with which to carry on with my day. In fact, this experience is what I recreate in the stool.

My minimalistic approach is also seen in my design for the threshold of a home (5). Inspired partly by my Eastern background, I incorporate two key devices of my own invention to create a marked transition between the outside and the home: a) a footbath--after all, the feet contain 40,000 nerve endings, so to refresh them is to refresh the body--and b) an accordion-pleated underground storage system, by which items like shoes and handbags can be stowed and concealed and thus remain “out of sight, out of mind.”

Do such concepts have any place in homes built for comfort? We are conditioned to sit, turn on air conditioning, and collect and display things. I don’t want to preach, rather I just question. My objective has always been to design beautiful things.

In deep, self-reflective search of an aesthetically-defined “common thread” to characterize my work in furniture and fashion collectively, I found my designs emanate from a single common shape: an eight-pointed star, or two equal squares offset by forty-five degrees about their common center. This star forms the base of my acrylic stool (1). The symmetrical half-star, with wider angles, forms the silhouette of my indoor swing (2). Spokes joining the center to vertices and points of intersection in the half-star form the ridges and valleys of my pleated fan-shaped sconce (3) and gown accent (4).

Imagine my joy when, after researching, I saw the shape of my sconce and stool with its own name, “Schläfli symbol” notation, and mathematical documentation: the octagram {8/2}, and similarly for my swing, the dodecagram {12/2}. This experience was only the first that exposed the role geometry plays in my design practice. I would make many more such significant discoveries, ranging from an application of a branch of mathematics known as “projective geometry” to a special case in one of my perspective drawings, to one of my garment designs motivating questions about “folding” in the Euclidean plane.

For me as a designer, math does not crimp my creativity; rather, it opens a world of possibility. 

Chella Sai Raghavan is a designer of furniture, fashion, and interiors. She is currently a first-year mathematics student at New York University where she is pursuing research of mathematical principles in her design work under the guidance of Courant Institute faculty. Find her at @chella.raghavan on Instagram and at ChellaSai.com.