23 May 2014
What happens when one of the most talented Japanese designers in the world encounters the company which manufactures an iconic chair that is among the best known in the history of American design? Unquestionably, a design that is able to meld tradition and new sensibilities. And this is just what has happened with the series of SU stools created by Oki Sato – Nendo for Emeco. The designer has picked the stool as a type to be reformulated for the American factory that has gone down in history for the famous lightweight aluminum chair it designed in 1944 for the US Navy. He has come up with a new product that can speak a versatile and international language, but one deeply rooted in the history of the United States. Thus each of the materials chosen speaks of its origin: wood recycled from old barns and carved by craftsmen of the Amish community in Pennsylvania is combined with Emeco’s trademark aluminum, “green concrete” or polyethylene recycled from postindustrial manufacturing processes. As is the case with great wines, an old piece of terrain, if worked the right way, can bear extraordinary fruit that are fragrant with both history and contemporary notes.
