The folding chair that we no longer wanted to hide

Who doesn’t have folding chairs stored in the shed or stacked awkwardly at the back of a closet? In the hope of changing this sad reality, the designers of the Alphabet studio have created a folding chair so simple, so elegant that you will even want to display it at home, in plain sight.

Sophie Ouimet
The Press

True, it is always practical to have a few copies of these folding chairs in order to seat an additional guest, or even to enjoy the sun on the balcony. But if the object is unquestionably practical, it is rarely applauded for its design. “The folding chair is often relegated to furniture to be hidden,” laments Marie-Ève ​​Sévigny, communications officer at Alphabet. We rather want to give it back a certain air of nobility. Not to treat it like a precious object, but so that we no longer want to hide it. »

Heart stroke

For the designers of the Montreal studio, it was a contract with Carrefour solidaire, in the Centre-Sud district, that changed this perception. The community organization commissioned them to move and reorganize its headquarters, a popular grocery store where people can also eat. “There was a concern to create very useful, very beautiful furniture, but which remains accessible to all the people who will rub shoulders with it, explains Marie-France Paquette, designer at Alphabet. The folding chair was one of the elements we had to design for them. »

Indeed, the collection, baptized forecourt, has four pieces of solid wood furniture: the chair, as well as a small coffee table, a running board and hooks. “You can hang anything on the hooks, but we suggest hanging chairs and the table on them when they’re not in use,” says Marie-France Paquette.

Get to the point

The designers of the studio also had in mind the space, often reduced, that counts the apartments in the city. The idea of ​​designing versatile furniture, which can be used both indoors and outdoors and which does not take up too much space, appealed to them. In fact, the pieces can be adapted to most situations: “If you need a small chair for the balcony, you take it out when you eat, you unfold it, you use it, then in the evening, we bring it in, and we put it on the hooks, ”lists Marie-Ève ​​Sévigny, for example.

“The idea is to go to the essentials in both form and function,” adds Marie-France Paquette. In this spirit, the designers were inspired by the philosophy of the Shakers, a Protestant religious community of the XVIII^and century. More than their rigorous religious principles, they seem to have left a legacy of great influence on modern minimalist design. Their austerity and their frugality, which were reflected in the simplicity of their furniture, have a certain echo in our modern lives where space is limited.

It is more the philosophy than the aesthetics of the shakers that we find in the furniture of the collection forecourt, stresses however Marie-France Paquette. “The only element that is drawn more directly from the shakers is the idea of ​​hanging the furniture on hooks, which they did a lot. »

The simplicity of the furniture, but at the same time its elegance, is reflected in the four pieces of the collection. Made of white oak, a local wood species, they are all available in the online store. You can also buy the pieces separately.