Double Vision

We created a chair with a new design featuring round legs. The front and rear legs of the chair connect to the arms and are made of wood and round. Using the curved wood often seen in northern European designs, such as Hans J. Wegner, the chair features an independent backboard rising from the back column and arms, which is our style, in contrast to many other chairs with round arms that trace the curvature of back where the backrest extends from the arms. This composition infused the armchair with a unique Japanese aura as a way to maintain distance from northern European designs.

Most of the chairs we designed in the past were composed of square-turned rear legs, back column, and front legs. Basic joints, called shiguchi, are joined surface to surface, and the wooden part that projects from the back column is joined to the arms. The use of wooden blocks for the frame and the entire design provides a hardened expression to the overall design. Based on the concept of using round legs and a round back column, while the basic structure is assembled with wooden blocks, the design achieves a sophisticated look, along with softness and a sense of tension by chamfering the edges of the wood parts on the surface, arms, and backboard. This gives the chair a neutral look appropriate for any space. When round legs are used for the chair and back column, the joints of back column and backboard do not conform well to the joints of the round legs and flat board. To solve this, a Giboshi head is added to the top of the round leg as seen in the shaker chair, or the tip of the round leg is flattened out to align with the backboard. However, since the element of smooth fusion to the backboard leads to unity in the chair’s overall design, the expression of a joint surface plays a central role. While the name, Double Vision, originated from entirely different impressions projected by the backboard and back column, it emphasizes the chair’s unique outline seen from the back, where the arms gently curve anteriorly from behind.
The side chair, compared to an armchair, has a more visible shape changing from the round legs to the flat backboard. For the arms of the chair, the joint hides the shape variation from the round legs to the backboard.

This chair is characterized by the marriage of the round rear legs smoothly unified at the joint surface of the back column and backboard. The rear legs, despite being round, match beautifully and unify the gently round backboard, which was the most difficult part in designing this chair. In addition, by adding a slight curve to form the shape of an arch in line with the gentle curve from the back to the front of the arms, as well as the wooden part of arms, the design delivers a soft feel when the hand or elbow is placed on the arm.
The angle of the rear legs is not excessively sideways, which achieves dignity, sophistication, and elegance with the well-balanced tension without being intrusive. In the final step, we used a soap finish to accent the expression of white wood. While the name, Double Vision, originated from entirely different impressions projected by the backboard and back column, it emphasizes the chair’s unique outline seen from the back, where the arms gently curve anteriorly from behind.