MOST people have found themselves needing to undo a button or loosen their belt at the dinner table after cramming in that last piece of chocolate cake.
But now an Edinburgh design student has taken overindulgence to the next level – by coming up with a chair that expands when you do.
Mark Aitken's obesity chair is designed to fit around an ordinary dining table, but offer that little bit of extra
space for people who are overweight. It has "wings" at each side which expand to comfortably accommodate excess weight.
The 21-year-old furniture design student from Edinburgh College of Art said he was inspired by the growing obesity epidemic and wanted to come up with a way to integrate "the bigger population" through design.
He said: "There's not a great deal of design for people who are grossly overweight and I thought the most obvious thing was to create a dining chair because of the link between eating and obesity.
"Most overweight people have to sit in normal chairs and their excess weight goes over the side, but in this one, the bigger you get, the more you compress the sides of the chair.
"This is not a massive chair, it's just a standard upholstered dining chair that anyone can use, so it doesn't look out of place around a table.
"It can accommodate anyone with a width of between 80cm to one metre.
"The idea is that it's meant to hold the excess flab."
Mr Aitken, who lives in Polwarth, will get the chance to test out his design on the public when he exhibits it as part of the art college's degree show, which opens on June 14.
He is also going to take the obesity chair to London in September to exhibit it during the city's design festival and hopes his idea will be snapped up.
He said: "It needs a bit of further evolution to be at a stage where it could be sold on, but I really need to get it out there to get an idea of what people think of it.
"I think it's an idea that could take off.
"You get dining tables that extend, so why not chairs?"
Mr Aitken is one of 400 designers whose work will go on display at the art college's prestigious degree show.
Other highlights include jewellery designer Patrick Mavros' Zimbabwean-inspired bracelets, brooches and nipple tassles, sculptor Gwen Thompson Marchesi's life-size donkey which is trying to come to terms with its own reflection, and Phillipa Headley's glasswork inspired by Southern Africa's Bantu people and their storytelling tradition.
Another interesting piece of work is animation student Julia Petitperrin's short film exploring the dark side of much-loved cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny.
The 28-year-old from France wanted to discover how the characters would behave when they were taken out of a traditional cartoon scenario where they weren't protected by immortality.
She said: "I really like the energy and silliness of the American cartoon characters from the 1930s and I thought it would be nice to do something a bit different with them.
"I wanted to change their perspective and try to imagine how they would be if they were in another environment or if they were in real life.
"Animation is not like painting where you can have your artwork displayed on a wall.
"You really need a special place to show your work and this show will be a good opportunity."
