Contract Furniture Designed by Steffen Kehrle for Brunner

 

Nate combines high-tech craftsmanship, sustainability, industrialization and formal research. 'Something contemporary, top modern, formal and soft at the same time, which from my point of view corresponds to the origin of wood,' Kehrle describes the basic idea. 'If you look at a tree, it is also organic, no straight lines. Nevertheless, wood is often processed into boards, contrary to its nature. We didn't want that. So we looked to see what state of the art technologies were available to produce with nowadays.'

nate s re-imagines nate's natural DNA with organic, comfortable contours and fine shaped-wood panel with a modern industrial design. The solid wood and plastic frame are replaced by a supporting structure made of slender round-section steel tube. The agile and particularly robust contract furniture is ideal for heavily frequented spaces that are subject to changing requirements such as in restaurants, the education sector and central areas in offices.

The collection was born after a long phase of study and engineering of the elements that make up the seat. 'We were actually quite far along until we realized: It's all still too complicated, still too ‘oldschool'', says Kehrle. 'As usual for a plywood chair, you design a frame, the chair legs, seat and back. The pieces are glued together and the chair is finished. The desired number of pieces of this chair is then manufactured, stacked on pallets and transported. But that just wasn't enough for us, we couldn't say with a clear conscience: this is how we do it now and off we go.'

And then came the brilliant idea to consider this plywood chair a real plywood chair 2.0 and make the frame, the connecting part under the seat, out of a recycled plastic, giving life to a construction that does not employ the use of glues. 'The initial idea of soft lines can also be perfectly implemented, even underlined, by the frame in recycled plastic. This is because the injection molding manufacturing process allows for an amorphous design'.

The revolutionary frame means that the individual parts do not have to be glued together, which has a number of advantages: All parts can be sourced independently and stored in large quantities in the warehouse, as individual parts take up less space as a complete chair. 'Thanks to about 20 3D-printed prototypes of the frame and close cooperation with a large number of specialized engineers, suppliers and service providers, a chair with a future-oriented appearance is finally created'.