2005

Vacuum moulded wool upholstery, stainless steel

Client: British Council

Peter Traag’s engineered-serendipity are perfectly expressed in the LTD chairs and sofa. He began by looking at the by-products of a process: when objects are vacuum-formed, in plastic or plywood say, there are always parts that sit outside the mould and are discarded. But if you worked with fabric as structure rather than skin, the drape and gather effects at the edge of the mould could actually be quite attractive and even functional. Peter had recently been experimenting with making chairs and shoes from layers of fabric bonded and stiffened with polyethylene. He had initially used a press with a positive and negative mould to form the chairs, but eventually arrived at the vacuum-formed pieces in My World.

The fact that the form of the LTD chairs is derived from sucking multiple layers of fabric into a void is quite revelatory to grasp. It seems unfathomable that sucking gluey upholstery wool through a 2-dimensional circle or hourglass template could yield curves so perfect — twin curves indeed — or a seat so comfortable.

In a nice concession to industry standardisation, the sequence of layers making up the sofa and each chair is one-third of the exact configuration of colours in textile manufacturer’s swatch book.

Emily Campbell