Roped In
Rope Chair by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec for Artek (image: Roman Häbler and Matteo Visentin).
There are many strands to the appeal of rope, if you’ll excuse the pun.
First there’s its strength. Think nautical ropes in the rigging of sailing ships; the yellowed climbing apparatus of an old school gym; or industrial coils winching cargo – all reassuring in the tension they can bear. There’s also its tactile appeal: rough flax ropes that are warm to the touch, or the silkiness of nylon twists. Taken to its extreme, the appeal of rope’s tactility is celebrated in kinbaku, an elaborate and highly codified form of Japanese bondage, in which binds and trusses restrain and accentuate the body.
While Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s Rope chair for Artek isn’t a fetish object (well, unless you really like chairs), the connection between rope and the human body is central to its design. “If you move, the rope moves with you, so if you slide further down the chair because you’re tired, the rope moves with your back. It’s surprisingly comfortable!” says Ronan Bouroullec delightedly, as if this is entirely down to luck.
The chair is simple, however. A tubular steel frame conceals a single piece of rope, which runs up the front leg and emerges to form an arm. From there, it passes up through the back, before appearing at the top to create a horizontal backrest. The process then runs in reverse, with the rope held in place by a small plastic screw inside each of the two front feet. “That’s the rock,” says Bouroullec. “There’s no glue, so that’s the only connection.”
Despite this economy of construction, the chair’s conception was somewhat serendipitous. “We didn’t start with the idea that we would design a chair using rope, so I don’t know where we got the exact details from,” explains Bouroullec. “When we went back through my sketchbook, trying to find the way we reached the idea, we just found two drawings that were almost exactly what we now have in front of us. The finished chair, in fact, is almost like a drawing.”
Words Evi Hall
Photograph Roman Häbler and Matteo Visentin
This article was originally published in Disegno #26. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.