Calma Lounge is a line of reclinable lounge chairs for home and corporate spaces with a cosy design available with an optional wider headrest to create a sense of privacy.
With its softly cushioned interior that wraps around the sitter, this lounge chair elevates waiting spaces and lobbies into havens of tranquillity. Its enveloping arms embrace the user, emphasising whole-body comfort.
Designed by Benjamin Hubert (Layer Design) for Andreu World, the collection launched during last week’s London Design Festival. OnOffice’s Lucy Thomson caught up with Benjamin Hubert at Andreu World’s new Clerkenwell showroom to find out about more about the collection.
LT: We’re here to talk about your Calma Lounge collection. What was the initial inspiration or starting point for the lounge?
BH: The Calma Lounge has been a work in progress for around 18 months and was really born from COVID, at a time that everyone was working from home and staying in. The Calma task chair is purposefully softer, less technical, more friendly, and more approachable than traditional office chairs, whilst the lounge chair, is like a cousin, but amplifies that sense of softness and comfort, kind of cocooning the user. You can do that in a lounge chair much more easily than a task chair, obviously. It takes a lot of the lines and the forms of the task chair, but also has a degree of technical function taken from an office chair, so it climbs and rotates. So, they create a family, but they’re not designed necessarily to be used together
LT: Amazing. So, could you maybe walk us through a little bit about the design process? From concept to completion.
BH: Yeah, so whenever we work on a project, we have a small team that will look after it. You might meet some of them later if you hang around. It starts with a conversation with Jesus and Andreu World to think about how we can fill a gap in the market. We look at a lot, the furniture world is a very saturated place. So, we try and find opportunities to create newness that’s relevant. And then it’s a process of identifying the function we want. So, in this case, simple things, rotates, reclines, ergonomic comfort, and then styling. So, the amount of shape, padding, it’s intentionally a bit softer on the inside, a little bit stricter on the outside, so that you get something that really feels like it’s an extension of response to your body.
LT: So, how did you approach the user experience in terms of ergonomics and comfort?
BH: The starting point for any of these projects is to find a mechanism. So, a thing that, rotates and reclines that is compact, that behaves, reacts to body weight, and then you work from that point.
From an ergonomic perspective, you have the levers that are moving then everything else is about optimising the shape for the most amount of comfort. So, thinking around height, shoulder width, and what sort of works for most people.
But the other aspect is the mechanism. We have a very simple and discreet pull tab on the seat so that you’re not having to do weird things like reach between your legs or bend over in the chair. It also adds a nice craft detail in leather.
LT: Does the Calma Lounge cater to the needs of hybrid work environments and where did you envision it being used?
BH: I mean, it’s quite intentionally neutral. So, it can be used in lots of places. I think there’s the corners, nooks and connecting areas that need softness where people escape to. Corporate contract work environments are where I think it would lend itself very well. But its personality changes a lot to be honest, depending on the fabric choice. So, you can do more technical things, or you can do slightly more crafted things. You can have more privacy elements or less so by tailoring it that way. By thinking about, again, very simple ingredients, it can be slightly more domestic or be soft contract and then slightly harder contract.
LT: Well, you kind of touched on it already, but what would you say are some of the innovative elements? We’ve obviously got the tab and the fact that it can be kind of more private or less private, but what are your favourite unique elements, would you say?
BH: It’s a good question. Not one single thing in this product is revolutionary, right? But the sum of all those things and the harmony of the form and the function as well as just the general sort of warmth it makes me feel. It feels sort of approachable to a degree, sort of acute and you know, those things make people – I’m not going to go as far as say fall in love, because it’s not quite that – but like, have a relationship with a piece of furniture. They think that’s a chair I really love sitting in, that I want to purchase, that I might have in my home or workplace that just builds that affinity.
LT: How does a design incorporate sustainability, like circular economy principles, are they considered?
BH: I mean, Andreu World are really good in that sense. So, no glue, no permanent bonding, everything can be dismantled. You can access the mechanism so you can repair, you can re-upholster, you can clean really easily, and then at the end of life you can dismantle it and you can dispose of its constituent parts.
LT: Could you tell us more about like the different versions and finishes available?
BH: So, I mean pretty much any fabric you would want to use, you can specify. We are working on versions with timber shells. So, if you want to have something more premium, more effective, then that option is available. A bit like the office chair, that thinking will be applied to the lounge as well.
Find out more about the Calma Lounge at andreuworld.com
