Furniture designer scoops award for school chair at Undergraduate Awards ceremony

A school chair that could reduce back problems in children and help improve their concentration has earned a young furniture designer a major award.

With children sitting for nearly two years of their lives by the time they finish primary school, Katharine Griffith set out to design and make a chair and desk that encouraged natural posture.

The research for her furniture design and manufacture degree at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology’s Letterfrack college earned her the national prize in the engineering and mechanical sciences category of the 2013 Undergraduate Awards.