Gävle, Sweden
Skargaarden’s Koster dining chair, designed by Anna and Jari Visuri of Studio Norrlandet is part of the Koster Collection, an outdoor furniture created to withstand even the most extreme weather conditions.
The Koster dining chair has recently been awarded a 2022 Good Design Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Before being brought to the market, the Koster chair has been tested multiple times in terms of durability and comfort.
“We were looking for a comfy, uncomplicated, beautiful, and simple design,” explains Jari Visuri, co-founder and CEO of Skargaarden.
“Chairs that are easy to sit in, even when you have a lot of chairs close together around the table.”
A chair goes through a lot before even becoming a chair.
It all starts with an idea of the chair, manifested in countless, rejected, sketches.
Eventually, the initial idea found its true manifestation.
The next phase is building prototypes and mockups.
Theory needs to be turned into practice. Sadly, this is where most ideas get rejected.
The Koster chair made it through.
The next step is for a skilled woodworker to make a production prototype of the chair that will test it – thoroughly: more than 50,000 repetitions of the monotonous static seat and backrest durability tests, followed by heavy load tests.
A standard chair for indoor use in peoples’ homes ready for production.
But the designers intend for Koster to not only be that but for it to be for professional use in hotels and restaurants as well.
So that means they made it endure even further testing, to meet professional demands and standards.
Also, since it’s an outdoor chair, Koster needs to deal with the elements as well.
Freezing winter nights and hot summer days.
So, the designers put the Koster chair on the lawn and left it there for eighteen months.
This is not how people usually treat their garden furniture, but the designers are not “people.”
They then inspected the chair.
The UV-resistant rope has the exact same color, two winters, and one summer later.
The teak has turned beautifully silver grey.
And that’s how it will keep looking for many years to come.
The Koster chair was designed for design interested people to buy and keep for a long time, and even pass them on to their children one day.
Project: Koster Dining Chair
Designers: Studio Norrlandet
Lead Designers: Anna and Jari Visuri
Manufacturer: Skargaarden International AB
