Blog | Designcollectors.com

Vegetal

posted on Apr 24 2009

• by Nico Wallays

It isn't the first time that nature provides inspiration for designers for example in graphic design designers often use photographs for color inspiration and in industrial design shapes of vegetation was the source of inspiration for Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec’s new Vegetal chair.

Grow a chair

During the 19th century furniture makers used North America young trees to create the contours of a chair, a process that took place over the course of several years. This traditional technique fascinated Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec so much that they came up with the idea of designing a grown chair. Nature needs it's time until it reveals all its beauty. The Vegetal wasn't different because it had an unusable long design process of 4 years. The Vegetal is made of fibre-reinforced polyamide. Flat branches extend and interweave into an asymmetrical, irregular circle-shaped seating shell. The woven strips are stabilized by ribs which grow downwards and merge with the legs. Viewed from behind the Vegetal looks like a leaf with several stalks and numerous veins branching off.

Analysis of the final details. May 2008

First sketches

The brothers quickly had a clear vision in mind. Delicate, round legs growing upwards, bending and branching into a ramified seat surface, meandering up and branching out again into back and armrests. When they first showed their sketchbook full of ideas to Vitra, the response was instantly enthusiastic. Ronan Bouroullec explains his work:

As designers, it is our task to find new structures, new construction forms and this chair is primarily structure and not just a motif

Study showing the image of a transparant leaf. Oct. 2005

First study drawing presented to Vitra. Oct. 2005

In the early development stage the designers didn't let their imagination stop by the feasibility of the production. A few months after the initial meeting with Vitra the Bouroullecs constructed a 3D model of their vision of the chair: completely asymmetrical, interwoven and grown, as if nature had been the creator. On the bottom floor of their Paris furniture workshop the brother began their experimentation process with graphical forms. They used large sheets of paper to draw different seat versions. With every pattern they had to make sure they integrated a rectangle of stable supporting elements in the seat, one which visually disappeared in the structure. The seating shell also demanded a stable substructure which would not require too much material.

Hundreds of stages were necessary to design a balanced structure. Dec. 2006

Surprise between the idea and first test model

The brothers had regular meetings with Vitra to discuss progress and it is at one of those meetings a solution was found in the form of a T-profile. Erwan Bouroullec says:

The T-profile was primarily a rational decision, but once we had found the solution things began to flow again.

Soon after when the first test model was created a nasty surprise popped up. Erwan Bouroullec recalls:

We sat on the chair and realized that it was anything but comfortable. We were constantly building models to help us understand why the chair was so clear in our minds and yet so awful in reality

The construction’s basic framework was finished but there was no end in sight to the constant battle between design, ergonomics, and technical feasibility. Questions that came to mind were; How could the seating shell be designed more ergonomically? Why did the seat look more like a perforated surface than branches that have grown together? At that time Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec made some crucial decisions by reducing the number of branches and flattening them thereby improving ergonomics. The seat was divided into three levels and interwoven at the crossover points to accentuate the grown character.

Final stage

At the final stage a long overlooked problem of the chairs legs came up. Vitra suggested that they cast the front legs together with the seating shell and keep the back legs separate, gluing them in later. They had to work on the flow between the legs and the shell. The hardest part was to calculate the dividing line of the two parts of the mould without creating a ridge. Egon Bräuning, a 45 years veteran at Virta says:

Vegetal was the most complicated project I have ever experienced.

Full range of colors for Vegetal. Nov. 2008

The chair will be available in six colors and is suitable for indoor or outdoor use and can be stacked as well. Vegetal is available for pre-order and is scheduled to be available in about 8 weeks from now.