the chairs we can’t stop talking about after 3daysofdesign
Exploring Copenhagen during this year’s edition of 3daysofdesign, it was easy to lose track of how many chairs we had seen until the rain returned and another courtyard opened its doors. The seats appeared all over the Danish city in garage installations, galleries, exhibition spaces, museum exhibitions and group exhibitions which have become some of the most interesting stops of the event.
For example, in other circles and Ukurant, up-and-coming designers assembled pieces that were more handcrafted, with visible joins, unexpected proportions, and materials that still had some friction. Elsewhere, larger presentations placed the chair in fuller settings, using it to shape places for rest and conversation.
Seeing the projects in person changed the way I landed. A stainless steel frame reflected Dalmatian spots, while a pine armchair looked too heavy to lift. A wave of wallpaper created a fluid landscape inside the Designmuseum Danmark, and a huge conversation pit at Vipp turned a courtyard into a place where people gathered to play.
These are the chairs that stayed with us after the fairway blurred together, each opening up a different way of thinking about seating.
Bend Chair, Oberdoerfer & Krebs
At sizean exhibition of emerging designers held on the outskirts of the city, at a local level studio Oberdoerfer & Krebs’ Bend Chair and Bend Stool began with a deceptively flat premise. The pieces are formed from 3D printed sheets, heated and shaped by hand so that the material only bends where the geometry allows.
What could be read as a technical exercise becomes surprisingly direct, with the chair and stool retaining the memory of the sheet while gaining the attitude of furniture. Their charm lies in that subtle tension between control and smoothness, and between digital fabrication and the visible pressure of the hand.
image © designboom
Bouquet Theory, Nikos Iouni
With his series entitled Bouquet Theory, based in Copenhagen workshop Nico Juni collected industrial scraps, old mold parts, steel profiles and component scraps, assembling them into objects suspended between furniture and improvised still lifes.
Seen in another circle, the work has the confidence of something loosely assembled rather than drawn from scratch, each element retaining a trace of its previous use. Rather than prioritizing perfection or seamless construction, the team lets roughness and randomness shape the work’s presence in the room.
image © designboom
Stand, UNS for Sancal
With is standingDutch architecture studio US translates the gradual logic of public seating into an interior furniture system for the Spanish furniture brand Sancal. The piece moves away from the single chair and towards a small seating architecture. Here, people can perch, gather, twist or occupy the same object in different ways.
THE architects form the tiered form to bring the language of the squares, halls and informal edges of the city to an individual scale, creating a social structure as much as a bench. During 3daysofdesign, he physically sat inside Sancal’s tactile living environment, where the furniture acted as a spatial tool that invited play.
image © designboom
Poodle armchair, Mati Sipiora
Dead Sipiora‘small Poodle armchair transforms a familiar type into something more animated by combining a polished stainless steel frame with a soft padded seat. The tubular silhouette gives the chair an almost cartoonish outline, while the reflective metal keeps it sharp and slightly aloof.
There’s humor in the proportions, especially the way the frame curls around the seat like a drawn line, but the object remains accurate in its construction. Its softness comes through the contrast, with the patterned, Dalmatian-inspired fabric set against the coolness of the steel.
image © designboom
To Brick or not to Brick, Kaspar Fischer
Caspar Fischer‘s To Brick or Not to Brick approaches the seat as an open system rather than a fixed object. Built around a modular grid and a specially developed connection method, the project invites users to assemble and customize their own furniture from repeated parts.
At Ukurant, this logic gave the project a playful yet architectural quality, somewhere between construction kit, domestic object and spatial prototype. The chair becomes a prompt for participation, asking how much agency a user can have when a furniture system leaves the designer’s hands.
image © designboom
Conversation Pit, Vipp x Mesura
Inside Vipp’s Copenhagen campus, a colossal conversation pit from the Danish design brand Seesaw and architecture studio based in Barcelona measure extended the chair into a shared landscape. During a site visit during 3daysofdesign, the Vipp team tells designboom that this element of playful companionship is a new exploration, as they have long curated retreats focused on relaxing in solitude.
Made from parts of it Seesawof the Loft modular sofa, the installation — created with measure — seats were used to reimagine the yard and garage as a temporary playground, wrapped in checkered fabrics and shaped around rest, conversation and gathering. His power was spatial rather than sculptural, using the low, sunken typology of the conversation pit to slow the body and draw people towards the center of the room.
