Milan 08: Lounge Chairs: Nordic Mediterranean is a range of four chairs created by designers Shin Azumi, Harri Koskinen, Christophe Pillet and Pia Wallén for Italian contract furniture producers Fornasarig Sedie Friuli.

The collection was launched at the Milan furniture fair last month. Here's some more information from Fornasarig Sedie Friuli:

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FORNASARIG

Lounge Chairs: Nordic Mediterranean

The poetic and dramatic lightness of a kite trapped in its flight. The structural essentiality of a small metallic wood. The smart reinterpretation of French Art Déco. The cross, a universal symbol made up to date according to a very contemporary taste for the out of scale.

These are the special concepts which inspired the four international designers (Shin Azumi, Harri Koskinen, Christophe Pillet and Pia Wallén) invited by Fornasarig to define a new landscape for contract: Lounge Chairs Nordic Mediterranean. After the important experience of the project Design Seating for Design Eating, presented at Milan Furniture Fair in 2007, the attention for the quality of life, typical to this Friulian company’s tradition and research, has now focused on relax seating.

The result is a series of new actors on the stage of everyday life. Their unmistakable personalities translate the international references of the Italian experience and the visual imagery of far countries into the warm materials of the Mediterranean tradition.

KITE chair - design Shin Azumi (above)

This lounge chair looks like a traditional box kite. It is delicate and lightweight, while simultaneously retaining a strong structural beauty. At first glance, this slender lounge appears to be too fragile to sit in. However, due to its masterly construction, the slim seat is able to support a significant weight in a comfortable and relaxed way. Sitting on it, one fells embraced and like floating in the breeze.

SUBSTANCE chair - design Harri Koskinen (above)

This is a wide low lounge chair, using the slimmer wood and a metallic fundamental structure for a global vision of lightness.

POOL HOUSE chair - design Christophe Pillet (above)

The lounge chair Pool House represents the development of a seating family whom Basicwood chair, from the project Design Seating for Design Eating, is the first seat edited. This line was designed under a spirit of simplicity and modernity, but also with a reminiscence of the Modern period of the "Art Déco à la Française" style.

KLOSS chair - design Pia Wallén (above)

It is built around my strong and continuous relationship with the cross symbol. I thought it was an interesting challenge to use this sign in a piece of beautiful, functional furniture with a classic and contemporary feeling. I chose the craft wear fabric combined with the recycled aluminium in order to fulfill my vision of the Kloss chair.