Pioneering Design For a Better World. Old friends Richard Hutten and Michael Young have taken a characteristically playful approach to naming their new seating ranges, each giving their design the other’s name. Michael Young’s recycled plastic chair is thus ‘Richard’ and Richard Hutten’s recycled cork stool is ‘Michael’. The two designers may have adopted the same tongue-in-cheek method to naming their designs but they are deadly serious when it comes to sustainability.
Loosely inspired by a 1950’s cafe chair found only in Australia, the geometry is comprised of two metal loops, bent to intersect at the side of the seat. The back legs form the seat, front legs form the backrest, overlapping in a way that allows stacking. With pressed felt we can get a lot of form into the seat, but the smallest change in the frame shape, effects the form and comfort of the seat shell. So the design team spent a lot of time balancing the comfort geometry, stacking economy and structural strength.
The Richard chair is a simple, mono-shell stacking chair formed from a 100% recycled pressed PET felt shell and powder coated steel tube legs. Available in two shades of grey felt with legs in a muted palette of earth colours, the Richard chair can be efficiently stacked up to 5 high.
Using a maximum of recycled material and being 100% recyclable, the Richard chair follows circular methodology – regenerative design that relives pressure on ecosystems by making best use of waste materials to create high value products.
PET felt is made by reprocessing plastic bottles that are washed, crushed, flaked and spun into long fibres before being carded like wool, layered into sheets and pressed to form rolls of felt. The felt is then shaped in a precisely engineered mould and water jet cut to form the seat of the Richard chair. Tough, durable and perfectly formed, every seat is 100% recycled and helps keep plastic waste from terrestrial and ocean environments.
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