The chair name is a tribute to a friend. One place which was chosen by this friend to build his beautiful home in the rural area of Atibaia, a city in São Paulo hinterland. This is a construction which respected the ground and the original wood of the place.
The chair was designed there. During one of these, many, week-ends when I went there, recharging the batteries. Breathing pure air and admiring the scenery, the green. The trees. With their branches. With a logic that fascinates me, as the most beautiful of all structures. The structure of each tree. The trunk subdivides in two, three, many branches. Increasingly subdividing until it reaches all the leaves, flowers, fruits. And the attempt to imagine how that tree structure is designed under the ground: its roots. A complex structure. Complete. To resist the heat, the cold, the rains and the winds.
The chair structure is built with thin slats. Branches that articulate, subdividing into a number of angles to form a light assembly. One spacial structure to support, very close to the limit, the efforts that are necessary to a chair. The seat is made of a very thin cold bent compensated wood plate, lined with foam and leather or woven fabric. The back rest, made of massive wood, worked with an ancient rough-hewing technique until one reaches the smallest thickness to suit, on a curve, the higher part of one’s back, liberating space from the seat to conform to the lumbar region.
All made of Catuaba, “Qualea dinizii”, a very light (650 kg/m³) but resistant wood due to its very long fibers. To this wood, very seldom is attributed a more noble use, as it happens with so many species of the Brazilian flora, with qualities that could very well be used if they were studied and tested as they deserve. The finishing with fine sandpapers and water based varnish, results in silky surfaces that are very pleasant to the touch.
The comfort that a chair must have was exhaustively thought and we went to the refinement of having arm rests that are thinner below so that they fit between the fingers and the hands. And there is a cavity over the arms extremities to conform to the thumb digital.
A new comfortable chair, using the wood in a very rational way. Resistant, without being robust. Very light (3.6kg), Just like a piece of furniture that we admire, designed 50 years ago by the great architect Giò Ponti: the Superleggera.
