Vitra is one of the most distinctive furniture brands of all. The Swiss company is known above all for classics that last for decades. For a brand with this profile, new designs are rare. All the more remarkable, then, that Vitra is launching a new armchair: the Bascule Lounge Chair. It was designed by Lisa Ertel and Anne-Sophie Oberkrome of Studio Œ. We visited the two designers in their studio in Berlin in Germany.
You're the first women designers to develop a lounge chair for Vitra. How did that come about?
Lisa: "The very first contact came through the Vitra Design Museum. In 2022, they acquired one of our designs, which we'd actually made while we were still students. A chair of which exactly one prototype exists. It's now part of the collection. Later there were conversations with Vitra, but not about a specific project – more a way of getting to know each other. Then, at the end of 2023, came the concrete question of whether we'd like to develop a lounge chair with them."
And what happened next?
Anne-Sophie: "Once the request came in and we said yes, everything happened really quickly. We'd already been given a bit of an overview of the development status by email. Then they quite quickly sent us a sort of rudimentary motion prototype, because they wanted us to build on that mechanism and use it. So we could get started straight away."
Translated from French, "bascule" means seesaw. The name comes from the mechanism that Vitra's development department was already working on when it brought Studio Πon board.
Inside the armrests sits a spring mechanism that responds to shifts in weight and continuously adjusts the seating position from upright to a deep, almost horizontal recline – regardless of height or weight. The result is a gentle rocking motion.
The armchair's new anorak
To understand what the mechanism could actually do, Lisa and Anne-Sophie first threw fabric over the wooden frame and moved it. The effect took them by surprise: in the folds of the fabric, something suddenly appeared that looked like the crook of an arm – like clothing that moves with the body. The image of a jacket that moves with you as you lean back became the guiding idea for the design.
How hard is it to develop an upholstered piece that allows so much freedom of movement?
Lisa: "With this design, we saw ourselves as closer to tailoring than to upholstery. In the fashion industry, the body's movement is always factored in. Clothing has a certain amount of room to adapt to movement. That was part of the image we had in mind from the start."
Designing digitally hardly helped us at all. After all, we always had to test the movement – and the natural fall of the fabric. You can't simulate that. So we mainly worked directly with the material, sewed lots of mock-ups and tried out details.
How did Vitra react when you submitted your first design?
Anne-Sophie: "Pretty positively. We mostly work conceptually, so we started by pitching a concept. When we turned the concept into a first prototype and brought it along, the Vitra team understood it straight away. We used that basic idea as the foundation for the rest of the process."
A cushion-like cover and recyclable material
Classic upholstery means pulling fabric tightly around foam and sewing it in place. But the Bascule Lounge Chair moves through a wide radius, almost to horizontal. The challenge was a cover that wouldn't tear, slip or crumple unattractively as it did so.
Accordingly, there are very few seams: two short ones hold the backrest, while larger seams along the edge form sharp contours that project over the armrests like a collar – deliberately folded outwards, and another nod to fashion.
Neither of you had much experience with upholstery. Was that more of an advantage or a disadvantage?
Lisa: "When it came to upholstery in particular, we asked questions you probably wouldn't ask if you already knew how it's done. And we tried other approaches. Classic methods – glued foam, tight covers – were simply unsuitable for this design. Of course, the experienced upholstery team at Vitra supported us along the way."
Vitra had developed a recycled upholstery material with BASF. How do you use it in Bascule?
Anne-Sophie: "It hasn't been around for very long. In Bascule, the V-Foam [editor's note: the upholstery material] is used in the seat and the headrest, for example, to give extra support in those areas. The rest of the cover contains recycled PET fibres, because we wanted that cushion-like, comfortable feel. But nothing is glued, so everything can be removed separately and recycled if necessary."
A fashionable armchair with an extra helping of comfort
The result of this joint development is a relaxed lounge chair that comes in more than one form. Bascule is available with a four-star aluminium base or on wooden legs, and as a Highback with an integrated, height-adjustable headrest or as a Lowback. The mechanism is identical in both versions; the head cushion on the Highback simply takes it one step further.
In the Bascule Lounge Chair, the rocking mechanism allows an almost horizontal reclining position. The Highback version lets you enjoy the comfort to the full, but you can also sprawl comfortably in the Lowback version. The contour always stays fixed, creating a calm counterpoint to the otherwise very free folds in the backrest. At the same time, it takes away the severity that classic lounge chairs sometimes have.
With Bascule, Studio Πand Vitra have created a seat that looks comfortable before you've even sat down in it. Bravo!
