There’s a lot of Canadian designed furniture that blends into the background, the kind of simple, versatile pieces that can fit seamlessly into any space – Uufie’s Peacock chair isn’t one of them.
Photo by Andrew Wilcox
This showstopper piece is one that will steal all the attention in any space it’s placed in – which is fitting for its name.
The Toronto-based studio began explorations for the chair in paper, with a playful process of folding, cutting, and bending. While the final piece – much like these early paper prototypes – is formed from a single sheet, the fabrication process requires precise, delicate and quick manipulation of the heated material.
Photo by Andrew Wilcox
There’s something a little bit defiant about the Peacock chair. It’s hardly the kind of form that comes to mind when one thinks of Corian most often used for solid-surface countertops. The design leverages the thermal and structural qualities of the material to its full potential. Similarly, it’s a distinct departure from the more humble aesthetic one tends to associate with Canadian design. But when we talk about more typical hardwood pieces, trueness to material tends to be one of the first topics to come up and Uufie’s Peacock chair bears this quality of material honesty in the most genuine sense – if a somewhat more contemporary one.
Photo by Andrew Wilcox
The piece makes a strong case, not only for rethinking applications and limitations of the material from which its made, but that perhaps there’s room (particularly with recent growth of interest in Canadian creative culture in other disciplines), for Canadian designers to begin making bolder statements with their work.
It’s not the first time we’ve featured work by Uufie, read previous features including Robin Whitteker’s piece on their Lake Cottage in Bolsover, Ontario, or browse all of their multidisciplinary projects.
This article was written by Miranda Corcoran, a designer and creative strategist based in Toronto who began writing for Houseporn while studying Industrial Design at OCAD University.
