The Shape of Comfort

When Design Ballendat starting working on the Amadeus chair they considered shape, lines, base and color.

They looked at materials, measured height, looked at other chairs in the industry, but most of all, they thought about comfort. Trevor Hollard from Design Ballendat spoke with us about the design process.

“I think if a chair is uncomfortable, it’s a failure,” Hollard said.

To cater to user relaxation without sacrificing design, Design Ballendat really looked at the curvatures of the chair’s shell. 

For Hollard, the curved lines of the chair were one of the most important attributes.

“This is why it has a very deep curvature,” he said. “It has a very soft and approachable appearance which grabs your eye and makes you want to touch it.”

Continuing with the comfort-based point of view, the soft lines and curves within the shell of the chair highlight the chair’s profile while giving off a contemporary vibe, making it compatible with most environments.

“We’ve used a simple line, there’s no loops, we’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible,” Hollard said. “That is what really makes this chair great. It has a simple design language.”

As the eye follows the chair to the ground, there’s an obvious link between the chair shell and the base, he said.

“We had the design for the top which we really wanted to integrate into the base, that’s where we really had to concentrate,” Hollard said. “How do we integrate these two elements?”

The answer came down to balance.

“We had a really soft shell and kind of a harder metal or wood leg and we were really trying to get them to talk to each other,” Hollard said. “We needed a marriage between the two.”

With the plan to create downturned curves on the sides of the chair, the shell appeared to be  draped over the base, integrating the two elements.

The next challenge was the total synthesis of the Amadeus product line.

“We really had to take care on the balance of line and weight throughout our range of different types of chairs,” Hollard said. “We had to make sure each chair in its own right was a well-balanced chair with its own identity and without compromise.”

It was then clear that in order to achieve this consistency, Design Ballendat had to focus on each chair without any other link than the inclusion of the shell, truly looking at the simple lines that brought the chair together. To gain an additional point of view, they had to look at the chair from all angles.