Sometimes the best inspirations come to us when we don't even realise it, for example in a dream. That was the case with the Hortensia Armchair: Buenos Aires-born Barcelona-based designer Andrés Reisinger imagined what it would be like to sit in a blooming flower and surrounded by soft and gentle petals. He made a 3D rendering that went viral on Instagram for the way it replicated the beauty of nature and inspired a calming and soothing feeling.
There was just one issue: while the rendering sparked an interest and even sales orders even though the chair didn't really exist, everybody told him it was too complicated to make the armchair.
Reisinger eventually teamed up with Spanish textile designer Júlia Esqué to help him with his vision. Together they experimented creating swatches of textiles that could help them reproducing the desired consistency of the petals.
They eventually made it and even found a company willing to jump on board and produce the armchair in a limited edition - lifestyle brand Moooi.
Led by Marcel Wanders and Robin Bevers, Moooi is named after the Dutch word for beautiful - the extra "o" in the brand name stands for an extra value in terms of beauty and uniqueness.
Moooi is interested in digital worlds and each of its designs comes with The Button, that is a digital proof of authenticity. The incorporated NFT- technology in The Button makes counterfeiting impossible and acts as proof of authenticity. With The Button, owners of Moooi design register a purchase to their own name, securing their investment plus extending the warranty.
Moooi made the Hortensia Armchair available from April, to celebrate Milan's Salone del mobile, the international interior design fair postponed to September this year because of Coronavirus. The chair's signature petal upholstery contains over 30.000 laser-cut petals and the interior design piece is available in two colours - Petal Pink and Petal Grey.
Moooi offers an online configurator on its website where anyone can configure the Hortensia Armchair choosing from a wide range of fabrics, including the Extinct Animal Fabric collection.
A video of the chair was also recently released, it shows teh armchair in imaginary environment, a courtyard surrounded by Roman-influenced archways that looks inspired by the labyrinthine house of the late Catalan sculptor Xavier Corberó in Esplugues de Llobregat, in the outskirts of Barcelona.
If you like natural inspirations with a digital twist check out also Andrés Reisinger's Ripples carpet for Moooi. Representing a drop or a stone falling into water the Ripples carpets (in pink or in silver) have a meditative quality about them thanks to their liquid concentrical design.
Reisinger has so far worked with high-tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung and in February 2021 he launched a digital furniture collection, called The Shipping.
The collection, includes ten pieces of furniture, five come with physical counterparts, but all ten can be implemented digitally in any open-world such as Decentraland and Somnium Space and Minecraft and in shared 3D virtual spaces.
In alternative the 3D models can be used in virtual- and AR applications or development platforms such as Unity and Unreal Engine and featured in games, animations and CGI movies and the designer stated on his site that the pieces will be iterated on in the future to continue being open-world compatible.
The collection went sold out in less than 10 minutes at an NFT online auction on Nifty Gateway in February for a total of more than $450,000.
Among the digital collectables that were auctioned off as part of The Shipping there was also the Hortensia armchair that seems to have gone through a great journey, from rendering to impossible object and from NFT to the real world.
Comments