Cord-Chair by Nendo

Japanese designers Nendo have created a chair made of hollowed-out pieces of wood covering a metal frame.

Called Cord-Chair, the design incorporates hand-carved wooden components with metal rods slotted inside.

The legs are only 15mm in diametre.

Nendo designed the chair for and exhibition of their work at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York called Ghost Stories. New Designs from Nendo.

Here’s some more information from Nendo:

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We designed “cord-chair” for our private exhibition “Ghost Stories. New Designs from Nendo” at MAD in New York.

Design concept

The cord-chair, a collaboration with Hiroshima Prefecture manufacturer Maruni Wood Industry, has legs only 15 mm in diameter. Rather than assembling wood panels around 9mm steel frame, we decided to hollow out pieces of wood to clad each part of the frame. We were particularly interested in showing off the flawlessness of the wood material. Each of the chair’s parts is carved from wood, left simple and undecorated to bring out the flawlessness of the material.

Since each part is only 3 mm wide, the chair must be made by hand, rather than with mass-production machinery. Each chair is carved by artisans who took special care to align the wood grain.

The cord-chair is not about the kind of ‘mechanical beauty’ that seeks the least common multiple in form and structure.

Rather, with the cord-chair, we wanted to explore the relationship between materials like the metal wiring within an electrical cord and the rubber that encases it.

Like reinforced concrete, the chair separates and highlights the role of each element. It liberates wood from structure, allowing the material’s natural warmth and softness to come into sharp focus, and bringing out its greatest common denominator.