Boss by name and nature: boardroom seating gets a promotion

British manufacturing excellence enters the executive fray in the form of Boss Design's Uma chair – sculpture meets ultra-comfort.

By Boss Design and Mark C. O'Flaherty for

Boss Design

June 9, 2025 | 12:00 am CUT

Boss Design’s Uma chair builds on the success of Paloma, reimagined to meet the demands of modern executive spaces

Boss Design

Uma Meeting Chair

Certain chairs arrive to a space already preoccupied with connotation, fresh from the finishing touches of production. Seating is always created for a specific context. You enter a particular room with certain goals, expectations and needs. In an executive meeting space, you need to be comfortable for extended periods while also remaining alert. The room should look meticulous and psychologically reassuring, yet free from visual distractions. Furniture in this setting must contribute to a mood of positivity, strategising, authority and efficiency. It’s a zone for decision-making.

With its organic silhouette, Uma’s form combines aesthetics and comfort, offering a discreet design that reveals its brilliance in use

Boss Design

Paloma Meeting Chair - 4 Star with Casters

Boss Design

Uma Meeting Chair

Uma fits right in

Taking all of this into account, along with a drive to innovate, maximise circularity and sustainability, Boss Design created the Uma – an ergonomic high-back addition to the hugely successful 2019 Paloma chair. Visually, it’s a perfect fit for the next decade boardroom, while offering a greater sense of physical well-being than anything produced for the executive space to date.

It’s a perfect fit for the next decade boardroom, while offering a greater sense of physical well-being

Uma is an ideal design for meetings, but when its upholstery is altered from leather to a woven textile, with the option of two-tone fabrics, it works brilliantly in a diverse range of settings. It can sit well in a hospitality lounge, a boardroom, or it can become the ultimate desk chair. Serious yet playful, it is a pleasure to use and experience – a modern object for humans who want to communicate, collaborate and focus, contributing to visual coherence in myriad contemporary spaces.

Boss Design

Uma Meeting Chair

Innovative moulding and foam layering techniques give Uma its ultimate comfort, blending firm edges with a soft, supportive core

Firm edges, soft centre

The Bio-PUR® foam, that gives Uma its next-level comfort, has a carbon footprint 75% lower than conventional PU foam. This material choice is typical of Boss Designs’ focus on future-proofing its manufacturing and products. Uma can be reupholstered and refurbished for a second life, and its foam, steel frame, plywood and aluminium components are easy to separate for reuse or recycling. The new design is available in either a four- or five-star base, comes with a swivel, height adjustment and a lockable tilt mechanism. Numerous upholstery options give interior architects and designers enormous flexibility.

‘Boss Design’s expertise enables firm edges that keep their form while a soft centre delivers an extremely comfortable sit’

The sculptural shape of the Uma is made possible by the innovative application of polyurethane injection moulding processes alongside a new approach to foam layering techniques. Thick seat cushioning is supplemented by a recess in the plywood base, allowing for an extra 15mm of foam. Boss Design’s expertise enables firm edges that keep their form while a soft centre delivers an extremely comfortable sit.

Crafted from low-carbon Bio-PUR® foam and materials that can be reupholstered or recycled, Uma embodies Boss Design’s commitment to sustainability

The beauty beneath

While the starting point was the success and unanimously positive client feedback from the Paloma chair, the Uma saw the Boss Design studio go back to the drawing board in terms of evaluating what would and wouldn’t work. Nothing was ruled out. The research and development process included experimentation with chrome and metal arms, but ultimately it was the singular form – similar to the Paloma, as well as its siblings the Amelia and the Remi – that created the most pleasing result. The Uma has a sculpted look with an organic silhouette. It is discreetly radical: the bulk of its innovation lies beneath the surface and can only be appreciated when you actually use it.

‘The Uma saw the Boss Design studio go back to the drawing board in terms of evaluating what would and wouldn’t work’

‘When you sit into Uma, the back has a beautiful shape that flows with the spine,’ explains the chair’s designer, Aaron Clarkson. ‘Where your lower back touches the chair, we’ve inset a panel of softer foam to augment the comfort while providing ergonomic support.’

From boardrooms to hospitality lounges, Uma adapts seamlessly to diverse settings with customisable upholstery options and two base choices

Uma is a paradigm of the Boss Design approach to modern furniture, blending elegant and organic forms with advanced engineering and a deep commitment to sustainability. It harmonises craftsmanship and innovation, is beautiful and built to last, and is created with the end user and that individual’s experience in mind.

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