’tis the Season: outdoor seating that keeps its place – and its looks – all year long

Memories are short when it comes to the weather. Many of us spend half our year or more gazing out at wet, freezing terraces, balconies and gardens like jilted lovers, longing for the summer sun to return. As soon as it does come back, however, it’s all too easy to forgive and forget, as the outdoor world very quickly becomes our new normal.

When selecting outdoor furniture to match summer-of-sun mood boards, however, we must remember the skies are fickle, and what’s ‘summer-ready’ one weekend can be entirely inadequate the next. With material innovation and weather-considerate design, however, modern outdoor furniture solutions ensure warm, comfortable and functional environments are ready and waiting for us outside, whenever they’re needed.

Highly decorative, Victorian-styled furniture is notable for its heavy detail, with outdoor furniture from the period no different. But while the intricate cast-iron tables, chairs and benches have an identifiable aesthetic that’s still appreciated and often revitalised in today’s contemporary exteriors, material choices have moved on. Fast’s extruded aluminium Omnia chair, for example, re-introduces the look with less of the weight.

Fast takes this concept of a hardwearing aluminium chair that allows water to pass through its design and updates it with the Forest chair. Meanwhile, also using metal to bring hardwearing strength to an outdoor collection, Minotti uses thin metal poles in the Colette seating’s backrest, lightening the look even further while still providing the strength the seating requires.

By slimming down its metallic material even further, the Lorette outdoor seat from Fermob features the intricate pattern of a classical latticework chair, but with a more pliable fine metalwork mesh to curve around its user’s form. The naturally-formed comfort of the mesh pattern mixes larger gaps with small, allowing air to flow through the chair, and making the seat a more comfortable place to sit on warmer days.

With a similar latticework design, meanwhile, Gervasoni’s Brise chair opts for the manufacturer’s own Woodevolution as a material choice instead of steel. A composite wood from natural wood with a strong resistance to stress and weather, Woodevolution is a material that eliminates the use of plastic.

As a material choice, plastic is an absolutely perfect one for outdoor seating. Light and flexible, plastic chairs are easy to pick up and reposition; simple to mould into stackable, comfortable shapes and thin enough to bend and flex around the body to be comfortable for all users. Commonly known as a non-biodegradable, oil-based material, however, plastic’s demonisation is well deserved. But with material innovations, that’s quickly changing.

As 100% recycled chairs like Pedrali’s Gossip chair – made from half post-consumer and half post-industrial polypropylene, and 100% recyclable chairs like Magis’ Bell chair – made from Magis’ own production waste and that from the local car industry – show, recycled and recyclable plastic is becoming easier to source, shape and colour.

The strength of a material can be multiplied when woven together in the correct format, while also retaining enough flex to adapt appropriately to the forces placed upon it. B&B Italia’s outdoor Crinoline armchairs rely on a polyethylene weave. In the collection, the supple yet strength-giving weave brings the opportunity for designer Patricia Urquiola to also add intricate designs to the supportive seat back.

‘I wanted to use the traditional technique of weaving,’ explains designer Sebastian Herkner, when discussing his outdoor furniture collection MBRACE for DEDON, ‘to create a strong design that was like the gesture of embracing someone,’ and to create outdoor furniture that would be comfortable even in the off-season, without the cushions.

Those of us like myself in countries with unpredictable summer rainfall (there are, on average, over 400 days of rain in the UK every year) know the drama grey clouds add to time spent outside. Until recently, the high possibility of rain has meant outdoor environments in affected climates suffer from a lack of plush, deep sofa or chair cushions to sink into. Innovative weatherproof fabrics and waterproof foam cushioning, however, are changing that.

Wrapped in a waterproof laminated polypropylene cover, the ventilated filling of the Natal Alu sofa from Tribù makes adapting to the changing forecast as simple as getting up, without worrying about the cushions getting wet. Meanwhile, the outdoor-furniture-suitable Fabian fabric from Flou is fireproof and water-resistant yet soft to the touch, while the Miguel material has a three-dimensional Jacquard effect and is also resistant to water, fire and solar radiation.

© Architonic

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