It’s true that the roots of horgenglarus go back to a factory for sawn furniture, which was founded by Horgen in 1880.

The first proper collaboration involved the interior design of the newly refurbished restaurant Vorderer Sternen in Bellevue Square in Zurich. The interior designer saw my chairs for Café Z am Park and asked me if I’d be able to make something similar for the restaurant. So I chose the ‘Safran’ chair model and distinguished it with star-shaped perforation on the seat plate. On the one hand, this was a nod to the name of the city's renowned restaurant, and on the other hand, it referred back to furniture’s history. After all, perforation with various patterns was also a common technique for serially manufactured chairs in earlier times.

And now, after my deeper exploration of horgenglarus product ‘haefeli’, I felt that the time might be right for a second design proposal. I was intrigued by the chair from the year 1926 by architect Max Ernst Haefeli and Ernst Kadler-Vögeli, the technical director of horgenglarus. Because as a small armchair, it offers more than a normal chair. But I quickly realised that the idea of re-interpreting this seat for our modern world today wouldn’t work. It has such a strong character that as soon as something is changed, it gets lost.

But you still found a design proposal?

Yes. I started thinking about a lower and slightly larger chair, in other words, a low armchair. So not a chair for the table, but rather somewhere to sit in the lounge area or hotel lobby, or at home as a companion for the sofa. Up until this point, nothing similar had been included in the horgenglarus product portfolio. And the idea met with interest.

 

How did the further design work go?

It was important to me to align my design with the basic logic of the horgenglarus chairs. This is why the ‘seley’ also has the sturdy and, in my case, circular frame that makes the horgenglarus chairs so unmistakable.

The chair had to be light and comfortable and because it wasn’t to be used at the table, it also offers a slightly deeper seat. And as well as a backrest, it also had to have an armrest. I started by experimenting with front legs, which ran seamlessly into the armrests and continued over the back as one piece. But that was too complex from a technical point of view.

I eventually found the solution in a back plate made of moulded plywood, which forms both the backrest and armrests. I spent a long time working on the precise shape of this plate, which now gives the chair its identity while many other details are inherently classic. And at the same time, the plate is efficient and economical to produce, which results in an attractive sales price.

 

Is the ‘seley’ a chair or an armchair?

I see it as a small armchair. The ‘seley’ offers a completely different sense of freedom than a chair. The plate makes the backrest the armrest and the armrest the backrest. So everyone can sit on it differently. The seat cushion also has a spring core which makes it much more comfortable than the typical foam pad used on most chairs.

But as I said, the ‘seley’ is a small armchair. Like cars, furniture has increased in size over the past 20 years. I see this as an extremely dubious development. After all, in large cities like New York, London, Paris or Tokyo, people live in small spaces. And even in Switzerland or Germany, the question arises as to how much space a person really needs. The ‘seley’ has potential that a standard armchair doesn’t possess: it is compact, can be used flexibly, doesn’t need much space and is easy to move.