Polyurethanes spur on furniture designers: Baykomm

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Polyurethanes spur on furniture designers

Scarcely any other area of life so clearly reflects the individuality of a person as the way in which they furnish their home. Whether it's clear-cut lines and the accent on design, a lavish country-mansion style, or an optimistic retro look - for many decades now polyurethanes have enhanced the leisure time we spend at home by providing us with attractive items of furniture. And, thanks to their versatility, polyurethanes have always spurred designers on to great achievements.

It was back at the start of the 1960s that the first visionaries started using flexible polyure-thane foam as the ideal material for turning their furniture dreams into reality. They included Roberto Sebastian Matta with his styled "Malitte" livingroom suite and the Studio 54 designer group for its famous "Mae West" lips sofa. Both products have remained milestones in pioneering design right up to the present day.

The same applies to the "Panton Chair", the first freely-oscillating chair to be produced in series and marking the first time that the potential of polymeric materials had been consistently used to produce a seat.

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This design icon created by Danish architect, Verner Panton, can be admired in every design textbook and even in the New York Museum of Modern Art. A de-sign classic, the chair was originally produced in a rigid polyurethane integral skin foam - and is now being produced in this same material once again. A wise decision, and not only on ac-count of the indestructible stability of this material and the high-grade surface it gives the product. A good design is recognizable by the fact that it still appeals to people many decades later, and a large number of original "Panton Chairs" are still to be found in good condition today.

Polyurethanes have remained the material of choice for furniture producers when it comes to comfortable and long-lasting furniture, or furniture of a sophisticated design. To take just three topical examples from Europe:

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The Dutch designer, sdb industries, used flexible PU integral skin foam to produce an innovatively-shaped couch with the name "submerge". This exquisite piece of furniture is like a mattress with a height-adjustable head end that incorporates big wooden compartments for storing CDs, etc. The material for the couch had to be lightweight, flexible and tough, while offering an appealing, abrasion-resistant surface.

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Flexible polyurethane foam fulfilled these requirements in an exemplary manner and, almost incidentally, helped the sofa designers to win a much-coveted applied art award.

The renowned manufacturer of elegant furniture, Rolf Benz, shows how polyurethane can be used to create a designer seat as comfortable as an armchair from a simple diningroom chair. He designed a chair which can be moved into a "relax" position, thanks to its special "comfort mechanics". Like the Panton chair, the seat shell of this upholstered chair is made of rigid polyurethane integral skin foam. This material allows the complex shape of the seat shell to be produced in a particularly cost-efficient manner, and reinforced wall thicknesses give the part the stability it needs to permanently withstand the fluctuating loads acting on it during use, while still ensuring light weight.

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Finally, a bedroom furniture collection from Italian furniture producer Celotto brings a Venetian flair, steeped in history, into our homes. This is made with " Finto Legno", a special, rigid integral skin polyurethane foam, which has gained an excellent reputation in the furniture branch as a design-friendly alternative to wood. In Celotto's "Legacy" collection, fine, stylishly-classical decorations evoke the mysterious mood that prevails at the landing stages between the Doge's Palace and the Rialto bridge in Venice.

Using wood, it would only have been possible to manufacture these "carvings" in extremely expensive small series. Thanks to "Finto Legno" which reproduces even the tiniest of details, such as wood grain, in cost-efficient epoxy resin moulds, it is now possible for everyone to bring something of the atmos-phere of a serene Venetian palazzo into their bedroom.