Design Museum Awards nomination taking an innovative approach to children’s healthcare is Chair 4Life, created by a team including Bruce Renfrew, James Williamson, Shaun Philips and Michael Phillips of the Leicester-based Renfrew Group. This children’s wheelchair design was created for the NHS to be used with aged 4to 18, and uses a modular form that can be fully customised to suit the user. It grows as the child does, and takes into consideration a number of issued often overlooked in designing for disabled young adults.
‘People don’t think about rites-of-passage like being served a drink in a pub’, Michael Philips says. As such, the seat can be adjusted to standing height, allowing direct eye contact with able-bodied adults. ‘One child said that having the chair was like all his Christmases had come at once’, Phillips adds. That, surely, is testament to great design…
Renfrew won a government tender in October 2012 and has sought to design a chair which aims to maximise the mobility and independence of disabled children as they grow into adulthood.
Its design ‘addresses the physical and social demands of 80 per cent of pediatric, powered wheelchair users aged 4 to 18 years old,’ according to Renfrew.
A universal modular platform can be updated and modified with a variety of standard attachments and bespoke ones.
