Introducing the O2 Lounge Chair for HAY, where minimal materials create maximum comfort. With its innovative shrinkfit textile and streamlined steel frame, this design delivers a surprisingly supportive and generous seating experience – proving that less truly can be more.
At first glance, HAY’s new O2 Lounge Chair presents a voluminous, inviting form – lightweight, strikingly open, and minimalist in its appearance. But behind its distinctive silhouette lies a process that’s anything but ordinary. Designed by Swedish designer Jonas Forsman in his debut for HAY, the chair distills seating down to just two materials: a strong tubular steel frame and a specially developed textile.
‘I have a material-driven approach to design,’ Forsman explains. ‘I often start by asking how a material behaves under tension, and how I can use that behaviour to shape something – without adding anything extra.’
During production, the fabric cover is sewn and pulled over the frame, after which the entire chair is placed in an oven. The heat sets the textile, causing it to contract tightly and seamlessly contour the frame. The result is a self-supporting structure that feels as engineered as it is natural – shaped through the tension between textile, structure, and space.
‘In a way,’ Forsman adds, ‘air is like the third material used in this chair.’
A minimal layer of foam provides seat cushioning within the chair’s spacious frame, but Forsman’s ambition was to challenge traditional upholstery methods and minimise material use wherever possible. ‘You came to us with a very relevant idea – the ambition to avoid the use of foam in upholstery,’ recalls Rolf Hay. ‘And in the end, you created a chair that just feels simple, comfortable, and beautiful.’
O2’s comfort is shaped directly through the interplay of material tension and space – textile, steel, and the air between – the very element from which the chair draws its name.
Far from a conventional upholstery process, this design approach reimagines how a restrained use of materials can still deliver generous comfort. It’s a quiet feat of material science – one that not only shapes form but reflects HAY’s deeper commitment to innovation that works from the inside out.
Rolf Hay & Jonas Forsman.
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