You
know that feeling when you reach for the milk carton and you think it's
almost full but in fact it's nearly empty, so you way overcompensate on
strength and nearly throw the thing over your shoulder? That's what
picking up this Carbon Fiber chair is like.
Even knowing full well that it's a five-pound featherweight, it's still
surprising. Seriously, this thing is as heavy as a two-liter bottle of
soda. It's infinitesimally more substantial than a 13-inch MacBook Pro. A
crummy plastic patio seat is like a clunker made of marble in
comparison.
Yesterday I held it above my head at the Dsegnare showroom in San Francisco like it was nothing. Hong Kong-based designer Michael Young has crafted something super light but incredibly strong—one leg alone can hold the weight of a 300-pound person.
The
chair has hollow frame that's made by inflating an airbag between two
sheets of carbon fiber; that structure is then heated, the air is
eliminated from the inside, and what's left is an indestructible
eggshell with the resilience and weather resistance of a bike. It's
stackable. It can be customized in pretty much any Pantone color you
desire.
Young
has been learning about and playing with the material properties of
carbon fiber for almost a decade—primarily as a consultant for bicycle
manufacturer Giant on a series of different models
meant to edge the sports industry into the "fashion" realm. This
perspective allowed him to approach furniture design in a new way as
well, and it took nearly three years to develop this particular piece
with Coalesse.
Expand But it's not cheap! Prices for a single chair will probably run in the $900 range. Consider for a sec that cost is thousands
of dollars less than most carbon fiber chairs on the market, and the
work he's done to make the concept commercial might signal the start of
more affordable crossovers. It just be a while until we really get
there.
