Form Us With Love and Ikea unveil the Odger Chair

Published on : Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Odger chair 1Swedish design studio Form Us With Love is happy to present Odger, a click-lock assembly chair in wood polypropylene, made in collaboration with Ikea. The chair is the result of a three year long project exploring how a sustainable composite material could be used to create an affordable seat.

 
This chair echoes the mantra of a democratic and intuitive industrial design where form, function, price, quality and sustainability come together in a product. Complex engineering is the secret behind creating the Odger chair. It is made through a process of injection moulding, using a mixture that is 70 percent polypropylene and 30 percent wood chips. The wood chips all come from post-industrial, recycled, wood-plastic composite materials.

 
Åsa Hedeberg, Senior Product developer at Ikea, explains, “A few years ago, Ikea wanted to work with logistics in a more sustainable way and set up a production line for euro pallets in wood plastic. The choice of material turned out to be less successful for the pallets, but instead, the material became the starting point for Odger chair. A mistake turned into something very good.”

 
Available in blue, white or brown, Odger features a curved back and seat, which sits on a base with four legs.

 

Odger chair 2Despite being made of a sustainably sourced material, the chair is unusual. A click secures the assembly of the chair’s shell seat and leg section using two handles. Customers assemble the chair from just four parts – there are no screws necessary. Instead, a “locking key” system allows the seat to be attached to the base, with a simple twist and click motion.

 
Hedeberg adds, “When you open the box of the Odger chair, there are only four pieces in it; the seat of the chair, the frame and the two handles. There is a manual how to do it, but the way to assemble the chair is so intuitive you don´t really need it.”

 
One of the challenges with wood plastic is that it is strong, but less flexible, which means it could break if you design it incorrectly. The only way to optimise the comfort is therefore to prototype it. The seat of the Odger chair is generous and comfortable, achieved through comparisons and persistent human testing.

 
Jonas Pettersson, CEO at Form Us With Love, concludes, “We are fortunate to be able to work with the best engineers and material experts in the world, people who share our drive for making a real change to the way we evaluate everyday objects. The Odger chair is a collaborative design statement, showing that starting from resources and processing is key.”

 

 

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