Tomeo Outdoor Metallic Chair by Hugo Charlet Berguerand is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2020 Silver A' Design Award in Furniture Design Competition Category.
SilverFurniture· 2020
Tomeo Outdoor Metallic Chair
Client: Hugo Charlet Design Studio
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Furniture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #101890The Design
About Tomeo Outdoor Metallic Chair
During the 60s, visionary designers developed the first plastic furniture. The designers’ talent coupled with the versatility of the substance led to its indispensability. Both designers and consumers became addicted to it. Today, we know its environmental dangers. Still, restaurant terraces remain filled with plastic chairs. This is because the market offers little alternative. The design world remains sparsely populated with manufacturers of steel furniture, even sometimes republishing designs from the late 19th century… Here comes the birth of Tomeo: a modern, light & stackable steel chair.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Tomeo Outdoor Metallic Chair is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Tomeo Outdoor Metallic Chair is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Tomeo Outdoor Metallic Chair is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Contemporary Furniture Design Services
We create innovative furniture designs that balance aesthetic elegance with engineering precision. Our award-winning studio specializes in developing unique geometries and sustainable solutions for manufacturers and brands seeking to differentiate their collections through thoughtful, contemporary design.
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Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
Tomeo is an outdoor metal chair made from bent metal pipes. It is a light and stackable chair initially thought to offer an elegant and robust alternative to plastic chairs for the outdoors. The idea is in the structure which has a unique geometry, the rear legs pass in front of the backrest and turn back to join on the top of the backrest. Thus the back rest angle is different from the rear legs‘ angle.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
The aim was to design a chair that would be appealing both in the eyes of the consumer, meeting best design quality and market trends but also to be interesting in the eyes of the industrialist. Considerable efforts were dedicated to make an industrializable product with a reasonable production cost yet unique look.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
My Goal is to promote my award-winning design Tomeo as well as my other realizations and start collaborations with furniture manufacturers. I am currently less focused on designing new products, I spend more time on promoting my work and trying to get visibility in order to find clients and start new collaborations.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Tomeo’s structure has a surprising and innovative geometry which clearly differentiates it from other products on the market. It is as if the skeleton of the chair has come out of its body, the seat is narrower than the backrest at the rear and the chair legs jut out towards the sides. The armrests protrude from the backrest at a forty-five-degree angle to meet the front chair legs. The feet of which are directly below the front edge of the seat giving the impression that the seat and the backrest are suspended inside the structure.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- 510 x 560 x 820 without armrests
590 x 550 x 820 with armrests - Tags
- chair, furniture, design, outdoor, metal, elegant, outdoor furniture, decoration, chairs, armchair.
- Production Technology
- The above photos show Tomeo’s prototypes made from plastic tubes and 3D printed pieces assembled together. The seat is made from rubber and from plastic rods for the second version. The real chair will be made from bended steel pipes welded together and the seat will be made from metallic rods or plastic rubber.
- Design Challenge
- The challenge was to give Tomeo a shape that would clearly differentiate it from existing products but that would still not be beyond what the consumer would accept in terms of innovation. In addition, I worked to make this innovative structure equally as robust as that of traditional chairs and to build the 1:1 prototypes.
- Research
- My design process strongly relied on my intuition coupled with a great knowledge and understanding of the history of furniture design. Everyday life, society, my imagination, my history and my dreams are all ingredients for my subconscious soup. If my designs reveal indisputably a part of myself they are also a reflection of the world we are living in.
- Inspiration
- This design takes its inspiration from the meticulous and exhaustive observation of contemporary furniture market, as well as from trends and aesthetic language evolution. The initial goal wasn't only to achieve an appealing appearance but also to propose a unique geometry that will differentiate Tomeo from all other chairs of its category.
- Project Duration
- This project started in 2019 and was finished in 2020 in Milan.
- Operation Flow
- Tomeo’s uniqueness comes from its original structure. Considerable attention was dedicated to the look, which had to be simple but contemporary. Many pieces of metallic furniture on the market are strongly inspired from older designs from the 20th century. Tomeo is truly different from what already exists because the design itself questions the traditional chair structure. It was also designed to be light and stackable to meet essential consumer needs.
- Image Credits
- image #1: Photographer Hugo Charlet berguerand, tomeo, 2020.
image #2: Photographer Hugo Charlet berguerand, tomeo, 2020.
image #3: Photographer Hugo Charlet berguerand, tomeo, 2020.
image #4: Photographer Hugo Charlet berguerand, tomeo, 2020.
image #5: Photographer Hugo Charlet berguerand, tomeo, 2020.
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