THE DIWANI CHAIR

Sculptural yet precisely engineered. Minimal yet warm and alive.

Year: 2014

Project Team: AE Superlab | Ahmed ElHusseiny

The Diwani Chair is a sculptural Rocker.

The flowing lines of the chair are inspired by the evocative and dynamic profiles of Arabic Diwani calligraphic script. The chair’s fluidity of form and linearity of texture imply motion even when at rest.  
The chair is constructed of precisely CNC routed sections of high-strength, cross laminated plywood, which are carefully assembled and hand finished by local craftsmen. 

Comfortably contouring to the seated form, the silhouette of the chair is carefully composed to be evocative and intriguing from all angles.
The flowing, sensuous profile is highlighted by the dramatic sweep of the cantilevered seat, while the contoured shape invites you to lean back and lounge.
Inherently strong and dimensionally stable, the design of the chair exposes the striking visual richness of natural birch plywood by exposing the linear end grain of the wood. Coupled with the complex curvature of each individual “rib”, the resultant surface is exposed as a unique, richly textured, and subtly varied field of linear striations.
The initial, limited edition production run will be available in either  natural white birch, or customizable multi-colored plywood, with more colors and materials planned for future runs.

 In order to maintain a low, stable center of gravity and to structurally support the seat’s dramatic cantilever, the thickness of the chair’s individual “ribs” vary considerably in sectional profile. This provides the required strength, stability, and balance, while adding visual interest to the overall form.

The chair represents to us, a highly satisfying marriage of traditional formalism and some of the most advanced design, prototyping and fabrication techniques currently available to us. While the initial form of the chair sprung from a series of pencil sketches, the final form is a result of countless digital design optimizations, scale 3D prints, and full scale mock-ups.

We have created a chair that is simultaneously sculptural yet precisely engineered. Minimal yet warm and alive.