Furniture designers certainly spend a lot of time thinking and designing ergonomically comfortable chairs and sofas. So do the designers and manufacturers of car seats. Such parallel design begs the question “Are there overlaps between car and furniture seating?” The answer is surprisingly few. Franz Romero’s Bugatti chair is a notable exception. The Bugatti chair is available at ddc – Domus Design Collection in New York as DS-57.
This chair is plain beautiful and comfortable. When sitting down you feel nestled into the chair. The angled seat pulls you slightly back into the chair. While the photo does not show it, the Bugatti chair can be purchased with a headrest. While the headrest completes the car vernacular, in my opinion the headrest is ergonomically necessary. Not only does it create an authentic car experience it also rests your head and relaxes your neck. Your body will be asking you for it, once seated I assure you.
For an additional element of fun choose a different leather color, perhaps a punchy red for the headrest which looks much like a roll.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a fan of car seats since my early teens when I managed to pull the rear seat out of an old VW. It adorned my room for quite awhile – one of many subsequent design concepts…
As both a car and design enthusiast I appreciate car manufacturers who pay attention to the seating in their vehicles. I recently discovered with great interest that Porsche is the first car company to provide adjustability to the rear seats in its new SUV’s.
One thing is for sure: our bodies evaluate the seats we put them into consciously or unconsciously. The three places we likely find our bodies seated in most frequently are our furniture at home, at the office and in our cars. So it really should not be a surprise to find connections between cars and home seating. What is surprising is that there aren’t more references and overt cross-pollinations.
