The Navy Chair That Refused to Be Replaced

The Emeco Navy Officer Swivel Chair walked into the present carrying about 75 years of history on its brushed aluminum frame. That kind of backstory could easily become a liability for a piece of furniture. Heavy with nostalgia, locked into a moment, impossible to separate from its origins. But in the hands of Jasper Morrison,…

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The Echo Chair Makes 3D Printing Feel Refined

The Echo Chair Makes 3D Printing Feel Refined

ZHA has collaborated with Spanish design brand Nagami to create the Echo Chair, a 3D-printed seat made from recycled plastic waste. Formerly known as Zaha Hadid Architects, the studio developed the chair through parametric design and large-scale additive manufacturing. Its form is fluid and sculptural, with an arched backrest that extends towards the floor and…

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Japanese Designer Built Furniture With No Glue or Screws

Japanese Designer Built Furniture With No Glue or Screws

Most furniture is held together by things you can’t see. Mortise-and-tenon joints, steel brackets, wood glue applied in generous amounts before being clamped overnight. The craft of traditional joinery is genuinely impressive, and furniture historians will rightly tell you it’s one of the oldest engineering feats in human history. But a Japanese designer named Tact…

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The Plywood Chair That Becomes a Castle in 2 Moves

The Plywood Chair That Becomes a Castle in 2 Moves

Plywood chairs are everywhere. You’ve seen them stacked in cafes, pulled up to dining tables, photographed on every other design account you follow. They’re functional, they’re affordable, and they’re largely forgettable. So when Irish furniture designer James Murphy sat down to create one for his university final project, the logical thing would have been to…

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The Folding Chair That Looks Great and Sits Terribly

The Folding Chair That Looks Great and Sits Terribly

At some point in our collective design consciousness, we collectively decided that a chair could be aspirational. Not just functional. Not just well-made. Aspirational. And Nor Casa’s folding chair, recently described as “flawed but Instagram-friendly,” is basically a case study in exactly that shift. The chair is striking. The kind of thing that stops your…

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