Whiskey
Armchair
2016
The Whiskey armchair expresses a playful exuberance of style. With its sculptural solid and recognizable character, this brightly coloured chair is intended to appeal to a youthful and enterprising market. Yet, it possesses a universality that comes from an aesthetic purity.
Whiskey fosters users to use their imagination and participate in its design through the interchangeability of its ottomans, which can be configured in various ways. The design encourages multiple sitting positions, provides continuous support to the back, and allows the user to move his legs freely. In addition, Whiskey’s oversized proportions permit two people to sit side-by-side in relative comfort.
Whiskey won the Red Dot Design Award 2016.
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Related Works
Tobi for Sitland
Laguna for Sitia
Process
Whiskey's backrest is a moulded piece of Oak plywood, and two upholstered ottomans compose the seat. The ottomans can be used either together or separately by pulling them out of the frame. The chair is enclosed at its bottom by a transverse timber of solid oak to support its correct static behaviour.
Promoting postural variety is an important criterion to follow when looking at how we design our environment. As Galen Cranz suggests, "probably the single most important principle of body-conscious design is to use design to keep posture varied and the body moving". Whiskey fosters user participation through the interchangeability of its ottomans, which can be configured in various ways, and encourages people to use their imagination and make their surroundings more exciting. This salient feature brings the poetics of the unexpected into furniture design and allows greater freedom in the modification of interior architecture. Aesthetically pleasing, Whiskey also provides a high degree of elasticity and dynamism in the spatial context. Its interaction design, especially suited to public settings, works more as a plaything than a severe seating solution. With their shapes and colours, Whiskey chairs readily arouse visual connections with the surrounding space, forming a rhythmical landscape of its own, or better said, a chairscape that rejects being just functional. As Agenore Fabbri once said: "If you manage to male an object which is functional and, in addition, gives this sense of happiness and play, then that's it, and furthermore, it corresponds to the age in which we live."
The modularity inherent to the proposed design makes Whiskey suitable for development in several configurations: a chair, a lounge chair, or a sofa. Versatility and flexibility are primary characteristics of Whiskey's design and can undoubtedly contribute to the success of its commercial exploitation.