Joan Casas – Barcino Chair(1963)

It is an outdoor chair designed by the commercial artist, publicist and industrial designer Joan Casa for the Spanish company Indecasa. The company, whose slogan has always been ‘sit well to feel good’, had been created a year before in Manresa (Barcelona) to innovate in the use of aluminium applied to the exterior of furniture. It had, until then, been manufactured in Spain in iron, which was expensive, heavy and short-lived. Aluminium, which is light, easy to maintain and long-lasting, was applied in this stackable design with a curved ergonomic structure which is assembled with very few screws, with a seat and back originally of cattail, and today produced with synthetic hand-spun fabric.

The seat represents a design proceeding from the autarky of the Franco dictatorship in Spain, a country where self-production contributed to overcoming the difficult years of the post-war and international isolation. Strangely enough, this chair is currently internationally recognized as the ‘Spanish Terrace Chair’. Today it is manufactured 4 cms taller than the original prototype because, as the management of the company jokes: “ the chair was adequate for Spanish height in the 60’s, but now we have grown.”

Author: Ana María Fernández García

Photo: Indecasa