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Paf Paf by Marialaura Irvine for Mattiazzi is a chair that teaches us to respect things

KEY TAKEAWAY:

When you manage to add the need for a natural gesture in an object, you add quality in the relationship with the users; and, ultimately, you promote care and durability

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Paf Paf chair by Marialaura Irvine for Mattiazzi - DesignAtLarge x DWProfessional - cover
Laura Traldi / DesignAtLarge

Laura Traldi / DesignAtLarge

Journalist, DesignAtLarge founder, internimagazine.it curator, scientific committee of the Compasso d’Oro Award member, Circular Design professor at NABA Milan.

There are chairs still useful to be talked about: like Paf Paf by Marialaura Irvine for Mattiazzi, with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.

It is a new typology for the Friulian company, known for its great skill in working wood for mono-material products. Completely disassembled and stackable, it was developed by the Italian designer at the request of Mattiazzi’s creative director Konstantin Grcic.

[ Read this article in Italian ]

Paf Paf chair by Marialaura Irvine for Mattiazzi – Sketches

Recycled feathers instead of polyurethane

Using recycled feathers instead of polyurethane for the backrest and seat (which is also covered with removable Kvadrat fabrics) the Paf Paf chair offers a unique feature: its soft parts lack that typical polyurethane rebound effect and must be “adjusted” by hand after each use so that they come back well rounded and lose the memory of the body that has just occupied them.

First concept and prototypes

Those who use this chair by Mattiazzi are therefore asked for a gesture that belongs to the collective imagination but which we have almost abandoned: that of beating the pillow in the morning to eliminate the imprint that our hard has left on it during the night. A gesture that, if it were to be described in a comic strip, would sound like the chair’s name: “paf paf”.

But isn’t it better to have a chair that doesn’t require any effort and is always perfect after we’ve used it? No, for two reasons.

The padded part is easily detachable

Paf Paf reminds us that we should take care of things

The first is that Paf Paf reminds us that taking care of things is key to grow to love and respect them. It subtly promotes a mentality that we have lost, accustomed to more or less technological objects that do everything for us.

This is the first rule that will lead us to produce better but less and, above all, to make materials and objects last to avoid waste.

Faithful to this exhortation that it imposes on the user, Paf Paf is also a chair in which, purposely, each material can be separated from the other, making it easily repairable, washable and recyclable at the end of its life.

The Kvadrat fabrics used for covering the padded parts of the chair

Paf Paf proposes an aesthetic of imperfection

Paf Paf is an aesthetically very pleasant chair, almost a union of opposites: in the designer’s mind, the soft parts should have appeared almost like two colored clouds gently resting on the solid ash base.

However, it is an imperfect chair: never the same either at the time of purchase or during use since the upholstered parts change shape in the relationship with the user.

In this imperfection we find another added value of this object: almost a declaration of humanity in a historical moment in which we are bombarded with renderings of objects made with AI (and in which, more and more, the production follows the look proposed by the designers of the various metaverses).

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There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
There are chairs still useful to be talked about, like this one with its wooden base and upholstered cushion and seat, resting on its rigid ash wood part.
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