Year_2018
Dimensions_50x50 cm, h.100 cm
Material_Leather, Steel
Services_Preliminary and executive project, construction

A new pragmatism is wandering around the world of product design. It will dictate the agenda in the years to come, and ask anyone to do radical choices if we want to save our life on planet Earth. First mandatory act: slow down any unnecessary industrial production. The world of product design is lagging behind in acknowledging this urgency.
No surprise: product design was historically used to increase consumption. Now it should evolve in a tool for the Circular Economy.

Pragma chair transports our architectural restoration practices into the world of product design.
It belongs to a specific design research, based on the act of incorporating existing objects into thin-section steel frames. The starting point is a set of leather armchairs dating back to the 1960s, characterized by a large seat but the absence of side armrests. No longer in use, they had crooked legs and deformed seat. Having been rescued from a building to be demolished, they were actaully one step away from the landfill.
The original upholstery, after the partial replacement of the internal foam and the replenishment of some missing buttons, was framed with a very thin steel profile painted in satin black. This frame draws the ideal profile of a cube and supports the recovered seat, concealing almost every static support.
The new and the old converge into a single entity. The material differences are amalgamated in the chromatic unity of the black color.

As the use of raw materials and semi-finished products become unsustainable for the mere production of new and superfluous objects, we come to the conclusion that the only acceptable design is the skilful reuse of what is already there. The designer’s task becomes similar to a mechanic who fixes car or motorcycle whose spare parts are no longer available.
Creativity become a tool for reducing the human ecological footprint in the world.
Design slips away from being part of the problem, opening new paths of research.