Lemma – Diapositive n°1
2009
CHAIR LEMMA
Sawaya & Moroni
“What is a wood chair?” This was the core of the question/commission from Sawaya & Moroni for Lemma. The first thing I thought of was the chairs used in churches.
The Sunday chair, for mass and meditation, the chair for prayer and singing, made shiny through long and regular use, with its solid seat in rustic wood or rye straw, and very visible pegging. Anonymous and universal, it is found pretty much everywhere, often in quantity, all the same and yet each time a little bit different.
For Lemma, I tried was attempting to revive the simplicity and availability of little wooden chairs that furnish churches. My method was to work by reduction: reduction of the thickness, the roundness and the curves, and the effect of the composition and of the articulation between the different parts in order to expose the material throughout. Thus, legs, seat and back blend into a single piece of wood, as if the chair had been sculpted.
A single element in wood appears to be repeated, a kind of open and softened triangle, forming both seat and back, framed on both sides by the same element, which extends downward to form the legs. The tight rhythm of the glulam further accentuates the finesse and lightness of the chair.
In fact, the body of the chair is a single piece of molded wood, set between two exterior profiles.
Lemma exists in straight or pinched version with a mass-dyed light or black oak finish.
