While office chairs are de rigueur for Vitra, they were uncharted territory for Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby in 2008. The British designers ’ previous collaborations had been with luxury home brands B&B Italia, Flos, and Louis Vuitton. Then the Swiss furniture giant challenged the duo to create a new archetype for school furniture; they delivered with Tip Ton, a desk chair with a fun, minimalist plastic frame and an ergonomic forward-tilt, which remains a company top seller. “After the success of Tip Ton, Vitra wanted to see what we could do with a more complex chair,” says Barber. So the pair entered the world of contract office seating.
“At first, it was difficult to wrap our heads around this typology,” Barber admits. But after months of industry research, he adds, the two grew confident that a pared-down aesthetic worked better than one with “all these exposed mechanisms and controls.”
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