ronan & erwan bouroullec: vegetal chair for vitra

ronan & erwan bouroullec: vegetal chair for vitra image courtesy of vitra

in a development process that took four years, ronan & erwan bouroullec‘s ‘vegetal’ chair for  vitra is the result of wanting to create a universal seating design for indoors and outdoors whose contours seem borrowed from nature. ‘vegetal’ features flat branch structures woven in three levels to form a round, slightly irregular seating shell. on the underside, the chair is stabilized by ribs that grow out of the supportive legs.

 image courtesy of vitra

the original idea for the project came from historical gardens of the 20th century, where young trees grew into furniture-like structures through continual care and deliberate pruning. the guiding question for the designers was how to construct a chair that would most closely approximate the idea of a grown chair.

image courtesy of vitra

one of the important stages in the process consisted in transforming the branch sections, circular at the outset, into a t-profile. this solution gives better structural qualities whilst at the same time meeting the demands of injection fluidity.

‘vegetal’ chair is  made from durable die-cast fibre- reinforced polyamide.

the chair is stackableimage courtesy of vitra

image courtesy of vitra

image courtesy of vitra

the chair is for both indoor and outdoor useimage courtesy of vitra

‘vegetal chair’ by ronan & erwan bouroullec image © designboom

detail of the branch-like woven seating image © designboom

underside of the chairimage © designboom

drawings of the vegetal chair image courtesy ronan & erwan bouroullec

various concept sketches of vegetal chair image courtesy ronan & erwan bouroullec

various structures of vegetal chair image courtesy ronan & erwan bouroullec