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2015 saw the completion of the "Piuma" project by Piero Lissoni. The chair is one of the most revolutionary and enterprising products in Kartell's repertoire of technology and materials.
Two years of intense research went into creating the hitherto untried blend of carbon-filled plastic that lies behind the Piuma's simple design. This is a compound that comes from completely different sectors of the industry - automotive and aeronautics - and was therefore completely unprecedented in the world of furnishings.
By applying its injection moulding techniques in a sophisticated new way that was designed especially for this material, an exclusive in the world of industrial design, Kartell has managed to create a chair that measures just a few millimetres thick (2 mm max), resulting in an ultra-light product (barely 2.2 kg).
It is the first time that a material containing carbon fibre has been injection moulded, and for an aesthetic, stylish product at that.
Thanks to this unprecedented mix of materials, the Piuma is not only extremely light and slender but also incredibly durable, flexible, suitable for outdoor use and foldable.
Piero Lissoni tells us a bit more about it: "The name Piuma (feather) instantly suggests the product's main property. The Piuma is a chair moulded from a mixture of materials that lead to it weighing very little, just over 2 kilogrammes, and exceeding no more than 2 millimetres in thickness. Light as a feather, this seat is extraordinary to say the least in terms of structure, torsion and deformation. The closest thing to this chair's lightness and durability is, paradoxically, to use an evocative image, an eggshell. I embarked on this project with Kartell by looking at this incredible example given to us by nature. Thanks to its shape, an egg is extremely efficient. This was the inspiration behind the Piuma design, which came into being little by little, evolving through the moulding process. We needed a much larger and more powerful mould than normal; we needed time to precisely calibrate the mixture, to the nearest tenth of a gramme. In some ways, technology designed the chair. I just added the details".
The Piuma is a new jewel in the crown for Kartell, a company that is proud of its pioneering research into materials and technologies, anticipating new domestic trends and needs.
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