Peoples Chair was originally designed for the Finnish Socialist Party with Aspekt Office. Aspekt Office is a Copenhagen-based multidisciplinary design studio, specialising in the fields of furniture, product, interior design and creative direction."We wanted to create a minimal chair with a strong graphic expression that is still inviting and nice to sit in."
”We wanted to find a stackable and sturdy, yet elegant, chair for our office. For me, the Peoples Chair embodies the simple functional elegance of the worker's movements early meeting rooms, but in a contemporary design”, says Antton Rönnholm, general secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Finland.
”There were no particular briefs from the client, thus the main inspiration came to us from the logo of the party. Initially, we thought to apply its curved, soft shape to the backrest of the chair, but we wanted something more subtle. We decided to apply that shape to the seat, and to create a thread all along the legs and up to the backrest”, Aspekt Office explains.
The whole structure of the chair revolves around the shape of their logo, alternating spiky edges with rounded ones. The legs are narrow from a frontal perspective, and wide from the side, adding stability to the chair. The seat as well follows the shape of a flag in the wind, where the central part and the sides are a continuum of curves, emphasized at the side edges, where the radius makes the chair look bigger.
”To give it more character and a feel of sturdiness, we chose lacquered oak wood; a red version was developed for the party. We wanted the chair to have a fresh and graphic look, and to be something that you would not imagine you would see in the parliament”, Aspekt Office concludes.
