Super Chair

Before making a judgement about a product, one generally looks at it from all sides. The Super Chair is a little different, because it is so hard to take one’s eyes off the striking silhouette that so eloquently sums up the overall design statement. Moulded from a single piece of polypropylene, the designer could almost be described as a sculptor, because the Super Chair is more of a sculptural object than a functional item of seating furniture. The jury expressed the following: “We were immediately captivated by the stunning design. On closer inspection, it is obvious how much attention has been paid to detail. The Super Chair is remarkably stable and absolutely suitable for everyday use. It’s hardly possible to make a plastic chair any better, more extreme, more daring or more detail-focused.” Thanks to its genuinely remarkable statics, the Super Chair appears to float like a cantilever chair – yet, at the same time, the back section provides robust stability. The half-open footwell also offers space to stow a bag. “The chair works perfectly as both an indoor and outdoor seating element,” said the jury. Another aspect of the chair’s design is that several units can be stacked together when not in use to save space, which is advantageous in homes, restaurants and offices. Although stackability wasn’t the top priority in the development phase, as the designer reveals, the benefits were so obvious that this feature was retained right through to production. The use of recycled polypropylene reflects the fact that sustainability was factored into the design, yet it also meant that specialised injection moulding technology was needed for the chair’s production. The Super Chair therefore unites sustainability with state-of-the-art technology, and the jurors were accordingly enthusiastic in their appraisal of it: “The Super Chair is in a league of its own. We saw wild experimentation with plastic and sculptural design in the 1960s – but this is different, because it’s intelligent. The Super Chair could well be epoch-defining.”