Alberto-Meda

Thirty years separate Alberto Meda’s 1996 Meda chair from the Bascule lounge chair that Studio Œ unveiled at Vitra’s Nordhavn showroom this week. Read in sequence, Vitra lounge soft seating chairs trace a single arc: from the soft-net ergonomic engineering Meda imported into the office in the mid-1990s to the recyclable V-Foam upholstery Lisa Ertel and Anne-Sophie Oberkrome wrapped around Bascule like a loosely tailored jacket. In between sit Antonio Citterio’s ID Chair Concept of 2010, Konstantin Grcic’s pendulum-suspended Citizen of 2020, Panter & Tourron’s disassemblable Anagram sofa of 2024, and Stephan Hurlemann’s Reset chair from Salone this April. Six projects, six designers, one consistent question: how soft should a working chair be, and what should it be made of? ...