Va-Va-Boum!
Monica Graffeo's new chair takes its inspiration from car manufacturing
(and French pop music).
By Paul Makovsky
October 2003
The Salone Internazionale del Mobile, in Milan, is a great place to discover
new international trends, see new products, and scout for talented new designers
like Monica Graffeo, who has been quietly producing work for Kristalia (www.kristalia.it),
a young Italian furniture company. Here Graffeo talks about her Boum chair
(designed in collaboration with Kristalia marketing director and co-owner
Ruggero Magrini), which won this year's Young & Design prize at the
Salone.
At first I thought of naming it Boom, but later we found a French song
called "Boum" that we liked so we decided to link the chair to
that song.
I wanted to create a stackable chair for both the contract and residential
markets that had a soft feeling when you sat in it. I found a technology
used in the automotive industry for making car doors by sandwiching a metal
structure between two materials, and thought it would be a good idea to
do a chair with this.
The knob on the back is a handle, but it is also a technical solution because
we needed it to hide a screw that holds the two shells together.
It's available with or without arms (as shown here), as a swivel chair,
and as a swivel chair on casters.
The biggest problems in designing the prototype were figuring out how
to hide the extra fabric along the chair perimeter and deciding what kind
of foam/fabric to use. At first we thought of using two shells: one
for the back and one for the front. The back shell was just to cover the
flap all around the perimeter of the chair. Having two shells meant
a higher cost, so I had to design the shape precisely, working very closely
with the engineers.
It was important to use a fabric that would be durable and easy to clean.
I also wanted the chair to be a friendly, communicative object and not look
too technical, so I decided to use a high-performance soft fabric in shiny
colors. This was the first time our manufacturers tried pressing shiny
fabric and thick foam together, so we needed to do some tests. We made a
prototype mold to try out many materials, and after seven months of many
tests, we found the right one.
Figuring out the metal structure and plastic parts for the chair was not a
problem. The chair is made of an anodized-aluminum structure with polypropylene
end parts. Kristalia's network of suppliers helped us find existing materials
and create others, thanks to their knowledge in the shoe-manufacturing and
fire-safety fields. |
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Height: 31 in.
Depth: 15.5 in. |
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Monica Graffeo (b. 1973) grew up in Pordenone, a city in northern Italy.
After attending an experimental high school specializing in classical studies,
she went on to study industrial design at the Italian Design School in Padova,
graduating in 1996. Graffeo then started working with Fausto Boscariol and
Gabriele Centazzo at Valcucine. In 1998 she started her own studio and began
working with Kristalia, creating the Free chair for the company in 2001. Since
designing the Boum chair, Graffeo has been working on a mirror, a leather
chair, and a bookcase for Kristalia; a chair for Alivar; and some products for
Arflex.
Photos courtesy Kristalia |
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