What Happens When a Chair Takes Five Years to Design
Editor Sunjin Kim | Bobby Mandrup
Since founding his studio in 2010, Jonas Trampedach has created a wide range of products with Copenhagen-based contemporary brands such as HAY and Frama, as well as manufacturers around the world, including Fredericia Furniture, Arco, and Karakter. He combines traditional craft techniques with a modern design sensibility to achieve precise detailing. Experimentation with materials and making things by hand sit at the heart of his work. At the same time, he continues to explore new materials and production methods, seeking a balance between structure, form, and honesty of materials.
This interview is featured in Issue 7 ‘PK22’.
My identity as a Danish designer is
both a powerful compass and a solid foundation. Growing up surrounded by Denmark’s design heritage naturally shaped the mindset a designer should have. After finishing my studies in Copenhagen, I went to London thinking, “Now I need to go out and experiment,” and “I want to explore every possibility.” But what I eventually realized while working at the RCA was that you don’t necessarily have to push your design language or your way of experimenting to the extreme. The work that means the most to me has lasting potential. These are projects whose results keep giving rise to new directions even after they’re finished.
The biggest influence on my design and work has been
my experience at the antique shop my mother ran. I started helping sell antiques when I was 12, and I think that gave me a very basic design education. It was a time of training my eye, understanding the balance of proportions, and learning about materials, surfaces, and the forms and styles of different periods by seeing and touching them. Only long after I started designing furniture in earnest did I realize that, thanks to this experience, I had already absorbed a great deal of knowledge and intuition.
My most memorable project is
the Type Chair, which HAY has been producing since 2024. Over a long, five-year design process, the first sketch began as a wooden chair, moved on to steel, and was finally realized in aluminum. The details I had first envisioned were difficult to achieve, so I redesigned it several times. Along the way, my assistant and I built it by hand without drawings, refining the design through making. Still, I didn’t want to stray too far from my original structural idea or compromise on it. In the end, I chose aluminum to create a backrest that isn’t tall but has a distinctive silhouette, and it became the first aluminum chair HAY ever released. This project is especially dear to me because both the process and the result reflect, in many ways, how I aim to work as a designer, with a focus on structure and materials.
Designing a chair
happens within the security of clear rules and conditions. Because the structure of seat, backrest, and legs and the function of “sitting” are already set, it actually becomes possible to try new materials and forms within those limits. When I design a chair, I always start with the same basic sketch and develop the idea from there. When a particular detail, material, or production method comes to mind along the way, the work naturally unfolds around it.
The Shim Coffee Table
was inspired by the PK25. Three tubular steel legs support the tabletop and rest on a flat plate base. This is an homage to Poul Kjærholm’s method of cutting and bending a single sheet of steel into a one-piece frame. To achieve a form that is simple yet sculptural, I modeled it by cutting and bending the steel myself in the studio.
Working with metal is
flexible and forgiving. Wooden furniture is easily damaged during production and slow to make, whereas steel and aluminum are highly malleable, so they can be shaped quickly and easily. Thin metal in particular can be formed by hand. It’s like drawing in three-dimensional space, which is why I love working this way.
The Rivet series
was designed to reveal the symbiosis between craft and industrial production. A rivet is a thick pin used to join metal sheets, a component commonly found in traditional craft techniques. In the Rivet series, aluminum sheets are joined by hand by hammering in rivets. Leaving the rivets exposed at every joint is the structural feature that runs through the entire series. It started because aluminum is harder to weld than steel, so I adopted a handcrafted approach. In the process, I discovered that assembling the aluminum sheets at 90-degree angles was logical and natural. Thanks to this method, the series, which began with a shelf in 2016, has easily grown to a total of eight products, including chairs, shelves, and tables.
The role of furniture in a space is
to add vivid texture. When you choose the right materials, both the space and the furniture become more and more beautiful. That’s why I choose organic materials that change naturally and develop a patina over time, so the furniture can blend freely with the space. For example, if aluminum isn’t fully finished, it scratches, oxidizes, and develops a patina, and you can use this process to decide on a finish. Visually, it’s important to approach things in terms of proportion and balance. Sometimes all the furniture in a room looks as if it came from one person’s hand, which can feel like a newly opened Airbnb or a badly designed hotel. That’s exactly why you shouldn’t be too bound to a particular design movement or style. Spaces and furniture are not simply elements that make up a style.
The keywords that define Jonas Trampedach as a designer are
material exploration and a hands-on approach.
Want to dive deeper?
Issue.07 PK22
Introduced in 1956 by Danish designer Poul Kjærholm, the PK22 is concise and clear. Designed so that material and structure become form itself, every element of the chair—from the steel frame to the leather and screws—works functionally while shaping its sculptural identity. A defining work of Kjærholm's design philosophy, which extended the precision of traditional Danish craftsmanship into a modern formal language, it is a chair that blends naturally into any space while exerting a quiet presence.
