Description:

The brief for the Interlude chair and barstool series was a family of solid timber seating with contemporary detailing, made locally in New Zealand and making use of modern CNC and manufacturing technologies.
It presents a good challenge to design and manufacture a solid timber dining chair in New Zealand and achieve a reasonable market price.
The project was also driven by a desire and opportunity to make an original contribution to the wider dining chair landscape.

The concept began as a linear silhouette with round geometries and softened edges introduced where one may touch the chair. It was important to introduce a softness to mitigate both the natural hardness of the timber and the faintly over proportioned thickness of the legs. The proportions of the material convey a strength and robust nature without having a heavyset presence.

There was a number of iterations to achieve the desired comfortable but elegant back height and angle. This presented the main challenge, with the seat remaining flat and parallel to the ground, there was no pitch to add comfort, it all had to come from the backrest angle and gentle lumbar support.

The Armchair is designed around a soft circular seat, enclosed by lightly curved arms into the backrest. This geometric typology creates a simple silhouette with the necessary softness introduced with a subtle back angle and radii on front or forward facing edges.
The side chair uses the same language in legs with a new geometry introduced on the seat. The first prototype of the side chair used the same round seat as the armchair. We found this round seat without the arms looked out of place proportionally. This was refined to a new form comprised of a square and half rounded back edge.

We also introduced upholstered seat variants for the Armchair and side chair to give further comfort if desired.

The linear language of the chairs was adapted lightly for the barstool, where we needed to introduce a slight angle on the legs, due to the extra height and required balance of a barstool, but retained the softened details in the footrest.

The collection of Armchair, Side chair and barstool are available in Solid American Oak or American white ash in a range of finishes.