Jamaica
Pedrali - 2019
Change of role.
Jamaica is a chair that uses modernist vocabulary of shapes but changes the use of materials. Its evocative astuteness consists in the displacement of the curved plywood, that gains a structural role, and, conversely, in the use of the metal tube as a sustained element. While feeling familiar, you find yourself surprised observing a Jamaica chair, because of the natural warmth that wood gives to the archetypal shapes of galvanized iron chairs. This humanization through materials is one of the key elements of our research.
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Dynamics of being.
The Jamaica curved plywood shell has a double curve on the back to provide lumbar support. The same component is used for the chair and the armchair, but it is paired with two different metal tubes. The seats have a dynamic appearance: the observer's eye flows along the sinuous lines of the seat and then runs along the tubular to meet the gentle curve of the backrest again. The variable thickness of the plywood of the legs contributes to this movement effect, directing the attention upwards.
Italian bohème.
Jamaica takes its name from the famous Bar Jamaica in via Brera in Milan. A meeting point for young artists of the last century, where coming together over a glass was the beginning of reflections and experiments in the most varied creative fields. Optimism, the clear eyes of young honest thinkers, the desire to reinvent a peaceful world and creative conviviality . The lights of that local bohème shine on.
Bar Jamaica, Milan, a spring evening: a young man does gymnastic exercises on a fence bar. Poser? No,he was just unconfortable on the chairs of the time.
The Jamaica family:
WANDERLUST
Spatialism.
Jamaica's metal tube optically plays with the illusion of completing the backrest. The dynamics of its curves aspire to the sculptural gesture of the aesthetics of Spatialism. But beyond these ideal characteristics, it basically behaves like a return spring: the curved plywood body flexes slightly with the weight of the seated person; the tubular, in addition to controlling the extent of this flexion, makes the elastic return constant in time.
Lucio Fontana, with his Spatial Environments designed since 1949, manages to touch perception as he captures the continuity of Space and Time. Wait, wait, wait: I have to sit and think.