Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
For those with $145,000 hidden down the side of their sofa, Zaha Hadid Architects has designed and released Lapella Chair, continuing their “investigations in structure and fabrication-aware tectonics by reinterpreting the iconic 1963 lounge chair by Hans J. Wegner.”
Created from Italian marble, Lapella retains the proportions, scale, and recline of the original chair while introducing “contemporary stone tooling and carbon fiber composites.”
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
While the original Wegner chair was envisaged in steam-bent plywood, ZHA revisited the design to create a hybrid which marries the compressive properties of stone with the tensile properties of carbon. Lapella is forged from precision computer numerical control (CNC) manufacturing, using a blend of Palissandro Classico Marble, a polished, slightly pearlescent Italian marble with a cream color and delicate hazel stripes, and 8-12 millimeter carbon fiber rolls, thus achieving maximum thinness, lightness, and strength.
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
A “tectonic” approach sees the chair embodying a geometry which expresses its light-weight material fusion and structural performance, seeking to cast furniture design from an architectural perspective. The team imagines furniture as “a precursor and human-scale test bed to the full-scale deployment of novel material and manufacturing technology at architectural scale.”
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
The design employs contemporary, state-of-the-art algorithmic extensions to historic design techniques usually found in stone masonry of yesteryear. These stereotomic design techniques recuperate from history, the utilization of curvature to elegantly transfer weight and forces to ground along with organizing the layout of material in relation to such force-flows.
-Zaha Hadid Architects
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
For the design of Lapella, ZHA worked in collaboration with London-based engineers AKT-II, the University of Westminster, and New York Institute of Technology. Sponsors included Generelli SA and New Fundamentals Research Group.
News via: Zaha Hadid Architects