Natural growth pattern chair
While at work developing their notable Algues product, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec began to speculate whether similar principles of branching and growth could be applied to a chair design. Based on precedents found in the work of Axel Erlandson, Alvar Aalto, Michael Thornet, and others, the Bouroullec brothers began to conceptualize a chair composed of four branches that grow into a network of twigs functioning as a basket-like seat. Unlike the precedents who worked with natural materials, however, the Bouroullec brothers wanted to fabricate this chair out of plastic—relishing the inherent contradiction between natural growth processes and industrial mass-production. The Vegetal Chair reveals the designers’ interest in harnessing nature’s principles of growth in order to create a kind of artificial nature.
Contact: Vitra, Birsfelden, Switzerland.
For more information, see Transmaterial 3: A Catalog of Materials that Redefine our Physical Environment
