The Gufram’s chair: stackable, coloured and soft indeed.

We have always felt the lack of a chair in Gufram’s catalogue. One of those you sit at table with, or so to speak. It was a lack we definitely had to fill, and it was a big responsibility. And to create a product starting from a customizing request that has to fulfil a defined, specific, exact function within the anti-design playground, is something to give you goose bumps. But the challenge had to be met, and, starting from these requirements, Karim Rashid created Boing, a stackable chair with a pop soul.

A chair is, by its very nature, an incredibly complex project; to create one in terms close to Gufram’s aesthetics and using the expanded and flexible materials that characterise its collection bordered on the impossible. But at Gufram we consider it a great challenge to overturn constraints, or to use them to create new landing points; it is almost a mission, which Karim Rashid was able to accomplish.

Boing can be defined as the new icon of pop functionalism. It is pop because it is irreverent, fresh and bright, thanks to its elements that can be composed in an infinite kaleidoscope of possibilities; these make Boing a product well versed in blending with any domestic landscape. It is functionalist because, if form must follow function, in this case the elements’ geometry is proportioned to be self carrying and to guarantee fastening to the metal structure. The comfortable effect is given by the softness and the springback which are typical of a padded seat, even if there is no padding. This last result is by itself a wonderfully paradoxical engineering short circuit.

With Boing and thanks to Karim Rashid, Gufram lays claim to its pioneering soul in the field of research. A territory where technique and art can converse through experimentation of new materials and different and unusual applications, complying at the same time with the ironic and irreverent tone, which is the unique genetic makeup of the company.

Technical data:

Product type: stackable chair
Use: indoor / outdoor
Dimensions: 50 x 60 x 85 cm
Materials: metallic tube with high elastic resistant, with coloured powder coating; webbed weighted flexibility polymer foam with process painting.
Colours: monochrome or coordinated versions as per catalogue, infinite chromatic possibilities upon request.
Weight: 7 kg


Designer: Karim Rashid