Showcase 2026 Student Spotlight: Becca Panter
Student Spotlight featuring BA (Hons) Furniture and Product Design student Becca Panter and her project 'Lorca Chair'.
By Jon Duckworth | Published on 8 April 2026
Categories: Student Showcase; School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment;
The Project
The Lorca Chair is a lounge seat built around the idea that comfort comes from movement, not stillness. It has a spring base that allows gentle rocking in any direction, a natural upholstery stack (wool, cocolok, and natural latex) and a 3D knitted cover that stretches over a tubular steel frame and comes off without any tools. As its designer Becca Panter explains: "With no glue, no foam, nothing that can't be taken apart and replaced, it's a chair that lets you shift and settle in your own way, rather than being designed around one fixed idea of how you should sit."
The inspiration behind the project
For BA (Hons) Furniture and Product Design student Becca, her self-directed project started with a question: why does so much furniture try to correct how you sit rather than just support it?
"I got interested in the idea that comfort isn't really a fixed state, it's something that happens through small constant adjustments. Naoto Fukasawa talks about designing so that the right behaviour just happens naturally, without instruction - and that idea stuck with me and shaped how I approached the movement in the chair." She adds: "The material side came from a separate frustration with how much furniture relies on polyurethane foam, which is difficult to recycle and has just become the default rather than a considered choice."
Becca wanted to create a chair that lets the sitter "shift and settle" in their own way.
The project experience
Summing up her experience of working on the Lorca chair, Becca says: "Genuinely challenging in the best way. It pulled me across skills I hadn't worked in much before - upholstery, metalwork, knitwear technology - and the hard part was holding all of it together as one idea. Some of the most useful moments came when the making forced me to rethink something, particularly around getting a tensioned knitted cover to sit on a frame without twisting or wrinkling because of the designs shape. Those problems were of course frustrating. But I've come out of it with a much clearer sense of what I actually want to make: things that are honest about how they're built, that last, and that mean something to the person using them."
Being part of NTU
"I came in thinking I had a solid making foundation but NTU has genuinely pushed that," says Becca. "Working with metal fabrication was something I hadn't done before, and learning to think structurally by understanding how a material decision at the start changes everything further down the line, has been really valuable. The research side has developed too, learning to actually use it to drive decisions rather than just filling pages. By third year the two feel connected in a way they didn't at the beginning."
For Becca, one of the highlights of her time at NTU has been working on a live commercial project brief.
"It sounds simple but it changes something. Suddenly you're operating as a designer in a real setting. NTU is good at creating those opportunities earlier than you'd expect, and it matters. It's one thing to talk about wanting a career in design; it's another to actually start building one while you're still a student."
Working on the project has helped Becca develop a range of skills, including upholstery, metalwork, and knitwear technology.
Closing remarks
Becca offers the following piece of advice for students considering following in her footsteps and studying Furniture and Product Design at NTU:
"Don't come in expecting to be told what good design looks like. You have to figure that out for yourself, which is the whole point. It can feel uncomfortable at first but that's where the interesting work comes from. Be open to having your ideas pulled apart in a 'crit', because that's genuinely how they get better. And talk to your tutors; they know a lot and they're approachable."
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Our Student Showcase is open to the public from 30 May until 5 June 2026 and available to view online. Take a look at the work of our talented architecture and product design students.