Furniture & Lighting

Modus - Richard Chair

The Richard chair came out of a long friendship with Dutch designer Richard Hutten, and the two of us decided to mark our collaboration with a characteristically straightforward gesture: we named our designs after each other. Richard designed a cork stool he called Michael. We designed a stacking chair we called Richard. The form was loosely inspired by a 1950s cafe chair found only in Australia, its geometry built around two metal loops bent to intersect at the side of the seat. The back legs form the seat and the front legs form the backrest, overlapping in a way that allows efficient stacking up to five high. The seat shell is pressed PET felt, made by reprocessing plastic bottles that are washed, crushed, flaked and spun into long fibres, then carded, layered and pressed into sheets before being shaped in a precisely engineered mould and water-jet cut to form the final seat. Each chair contains the equivalent of over one hundred recycled plastic bottles. The Richard is 100% recyclable at end of life, with legs and seat separating cleanly for recycling. We spent a considerable amount of time balancing the comfort geometry, stacking economy and structural strength, because with pressed felt, the smallest change in the frame shape changes everything about how the seat feels. The chair is available in two shades of grey felt with legs in a muted palette of earth colours, and holds Indoor Advantage Gold certification.