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The Paredes Center of Furniture Design in Portugal recently named the GVAL chair the First Prize Winner in the Making Chairs category of their Art on Chairs exhibition. The theme this year is “an idea for the world on a chair,” which is so open-ended and vague I’m not sure it’s even worth it to name a theme at all. Still, their intentions to scout new talent is nobel, and the four designers responsible for the GVAL chair – Vanessa Moreno, Gustavo Reboredo, Louis Sicard and Nenad Katic – couldn’t be more deserving. They used layered sheets of plywood to echo the imagery of tree rings. I’m not sure that really comes off, but the patterns of the wood are so gorgeous and the colors are so rich I’m not sure I even care. The best part are the two two ottomans nestled inside the hollow chair, making it a 3-part piece and storage unit in one.
From their studio, OOO My Design:
GVAL is a product that brings surprising and playful use to an object as ordinary as everyday’s chair. In doing so, it pays homage to the most archetypical of all production materials, wood, in its most natural form: a tree. The shape of the chair and the texture of alternating sheets of plywood is inspired by pattern of tree rings, which in a way represent tree’s memory: each ring usually marks the of one year in the life of the tree.
