Camarade Modular Furniture Collection

Camarade began with a deliberate refusal: an adjustable stool should not look adjustable. Most height-adjustable seating advertises its hardware — exposed cylinders, chrome levers, a "task" aesthetic that belongs in an office rather than a home or a restaurant. Big-Game's intent was the opposite: conceal the engineering so completely that the stool reads as fixed, archetypal furniture. The decisive step was resolving the integrated gas-lift and central telescopic column into a single quiet vertical line, stabilised by a weighted steel base, with a solid-beech footrest that travels with the seat from 59 to 79 cm. Once the mechanism had disappeared and the silhouette still felt calm and inevitable at every height — equally resolved under a 90 cm worktop or at a 110 cm bar — the balance between structural integrity and visual minimalism had held. That clarity set the whole family: the same language carried into the fixed 65 cm stool, the 45 cm low stool and the height-adjustable table.

Camarade was conceived for a condition we kept encountering on both sides of the French–Swiss border: the kitchen island that becomes a desk, the café that doubles as a co-working space, the hotel lobby that behaves like a living room. Rather than design two products — one "domestic," one "contract" — we made a single object honest enough for both. The contract-grade decisions are invisible: a weighted steel base from Manufacture Navailles and a European beech seat from Bastiat, dimensioned for the intensive use of a café or restaurant. The domestic register comes from the same parts — the warmth of solid beech, the restraint of the Terre de Sienne and Ardoise finishes, a footrest that reads as a detail rather than a fitting. What stood out most was how little the object needed to change to cross between a private apartment and a high-traffic venue: when materials are genuine, they age convincingly in both.

Working with European beech and French steel suppliers was a decision about traceability as much as aesthetics. The seat is made by Bastiat, a workshop holding the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant label — a French state distinction for craft and industrial excellence — and the steel base is produced by Manufacture Navailles in the Landes. Keeping production in France shortens the supply chain, sustains specific regional know-how, and lets us stand behind every stage of the object. But traceability is only half the environmental argument; the other half is longevity. The most responsible piece of furniture is the one that doesn't need replacing. Camarade is built to be repaired, re-ordered and extended rather than discarded, and its solid materials improve with use rather than degrade. In the broader conversation about sourcing, we think durability and local accountability matter more than any single recycled-content claim.