Milan 2011: French designer Matali Crasset will present this chair with a fold-out table for Italian brand Danese in Milan next month.
Called Double Side, the seat is designed so the backrest slides up and flips 90 degrees to become a table surface for writing, using a laptop or eating.
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The information that follows is from Matali Crasset:
Double side, Matali Crasset 2011
Seat: birch multilayer laminate
Colors: natural wood, orange laminate, beige, blue, orange or green felt
“An object isn’t generous enough if it has just a single function” (M.C)
Double side is a versatile seat which can be transformed with a tiny intuitive gesture, into a work tool, the back flips and becomes a small plane on which you can write, use your computer, eat or play.
It’s a new typology of products which breaks the codes of traditional living based on the idea of life borrowed from the bourgeois model which by now is outdated and does not adapt itself to everyday life but continues despite this to influence the space with rigid models and preconceptions, filling it with elements which represents a status more than a real need.
Matali Crasset therefore design this seat not as fixed element, dedicated only for resting but as a tool which allows passing between active and passive situations, which keeps up with life and lets itself be interpreted. The project isn’t a sign, a formal result, but a reflection on a scenario of life in transformation, the product is a physical transposition that derives from it.
“At home today the structures are fixed, like a paused video with a paused picture, life is changing and it’s in movement and it reactivates the video so to speak.
My projects work in the interstices of the activities, in passages between one paused picture to another in order to reattach them to one another and to renew the movement and the action in between the spaces.” (M.C.)
Double Side invites an action, and forwards potential opportunities which are revealed during its use.
In this, objects like Double Side can have a role in influencing life styles, succeed in creating stimulus, in transmitting not only a sense of protection and the comfort of resting but also the pleasure of creativity in modelling personally spaces in according with new visions , with a change in mentality and in behavior ( the non stopping one). Double Side doesn’t stop at the archetype of the seat but updates it always watching the real needs of “seating” and therefore it unifies within itself more traditional elements reevaluated according to contemporary needs: it’s a traditional and comfortable chair in the essentially, but positive, warm and familiar thanks to the use of natural materials like wood and felt, and to the color.
it’s a support plane, of reduced dimensions but sufficient to assure the functionality of such an alternative and informal chair.
It’s a small space which represents the affective heart, a sort of “memory” of the object in which one can put some books, the computer, and safekeeping personal objects. It maintains familiar elements like the materials and recalls familiar gestures like the one of the bolts for fixing together the 2 positions, in order to recreate a connection, a closeness to the person. It’s a tool for managing the annulment of limits between work and private life, for welcoming new technological tools which come with both. It guaranties action but in a less formal and more provisional way, like balancing life and work and manage at the same time 2 distinct situations.
In the spaces shared, the change in front of the use of Double Side can become an indication of the change in predispositions to the reality: from an invite to the search of privacy. Ds actually represents a more rich and open solution, ideal for public spaces as well, in which overlap more activities and behaviors places such as waiting rooms, relaxations centers or informal meeting places at the interior of offices and halls.
See also:
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| Smith Pro by Jonathan Olivares for Danese |
Xarxa Sofa by Martí Guixé for Danese |
Cau Sospensione by Martí Guixé for Danese |
This chair looks better in use than on it´s own.
that might just be the best functionalism definition for a chair i have heard. niiiiiiice.
http://www.swiss-miss.com/2006/07/allievoscolaro_…
Tens years back Mr Grcic did a great job with the same concept.
and Luigi Colani did in the early 70's too!!
Great idea! But it's bad for the hand position to work with the computer. It is not the ideal position mainly if you need to stay like that more than one hour…
N. B. : in principle hands should be horizontal to work in a comfortable way!
François Beydoun
i don't think that you would stay more than a hour on the chair…with that poor plank of wood and one little badly fixed piece of leather…
Nooo! I just made a chair with the same concept for a degree project! I didn't even know of either of these designs by Matalia Crasset or Mr Grcic :-( Oww… Just goes to show that no idea is original anymore!!…
@ Francois – you're right, and wrong at the same time. It looks like it works for the guy but not the girl which would mean it's been designed for taller folk – at the high end of the percentile bell curve.
@ everyone else saying it's been done before? Of course it has! Almost everything has been done before. Does it really matter?
Personally I don't think I'd go for it. I don't think it looks too great. I agree with the point that it looks better in use than on its own. But if I'm going to use it, I'm only going to view it on its own, or as I'm sitting on it. I'd feel a little odd if I saw this being occupied by a random model in my house.
It's been done before, Does it really matter?
Yes, If its worse than its predecessor
how do you use a mouse/stylus on this?
it doesn't look particularly comfortable ergonomically, as a chair or a desk, nor aethetically.
i'd prefer 2 pieces, but beautiful + comfortable, personally!
@ Mick, this chair-table designed to be versatile. IKEA is very good in this solutions! I can imagine many students living in a small apartments using this kind of product…
@ Jared, yes indeed the young man is sitting comfortably, but not the girl… This problem can be resolved simply by making it adjustable! And if Matali wants to make it even better, this chair-table needs to be foldable as well, it will have lot of succes I guess!
François Beydoun
I'd appreciate this project a lot more if it was sold as a D.I.Y concept, where you pay to dowload the cutting templates. Then you cut, drill, paint & stick cushions as you please.
In any other context, it appears unvoluntarily or not homemade and somewhat shoddy, not justifying a relatively high price tag.
check out the girl typing. thats going to be comfortable for max ten minutes. baleed dat!
It's nice to see photos of the furniture in use, unlike many projects on here, so they should be commended simply for this honesty in presentation.
The main problem with the design is the overengineered table support. It makes the chair look secondary to the table even when the table's not being used.
Functional, but I doubt that it is comfortable.
It looks more like a prototype than a fully realised product. The idea is great but more work needs to be done on its production and presentation. (Damn – I feel like I've just written a school report comment!)
i dont think its ergonomically friend either…those elbows need some sort of rest to avoid stressing hand pains..