The Bell Chair

Specs

Colors: Sunrise (orange), Highnoon (white), Midnight (black)

Material: Recycled polypropylene

Designer: Konstantin Grcic $105

Earlier this year, Vitra released a $3,245 lounge chair that, because of subtle metal wire connections between the back and the seat, appears to float in midair. Imagined by the high-profile designer Konstantic Grcic, its destiny is to live as a statement piece for the wealthy and well connected.

The Bell Chair — also a Grcic design — couldn’t be more different.

Effectively a cheap, plastic lawn chair, albeit one made by one of the most notable designers in the world, the Bell Chair began as a thought experiment: Could Grcic and his partner company Magis design and sell a chair for 65 euros or less? Simple enough. Make it out of plastic.

A breakthrough came when the design team figured out a way to make a mass-produced plastic chair less reprehensible — 100 percent of the chair is made of recycled polypropylene thermoplastic, which is comprised of waste from Magis’s other furniture production (and the surrounding region’s auto industry). The entire chair is recyclable post-production, forming a near-closed material cycle.

To keep the price low, Grcic and his team had to be judicious with the amount of plastic used for each chair. They sliced weight off and designed it as a shell-like bowl with slightly splayed legs to do more with less material. The final iteration weighs less than six pounds — roughly the weight of a comparable plastic chair. And it’s stackable, up to 12 chairs. The design team even built a custom, smaller shipping pallet (made with the same custom plastic the chair is made with), to fit more chairs in shipping spaces.

In Europe, the chair sells for the targeted 65 euros. Mission accomplished. But because of international taxes and tariffs, expect to pay a little north of $100 in the U.S.