PEP BONET BERTRAN (Barcelona, 1941) for LEVESTA.
Tuman armchair, 1969.
In chromed steel and black leather.
Measurements: 97 x 60 x 82 cm.
In this armchair Pep Bonet is close to the rationalist tendency advocated by the Bauhaus and applied by GATEPAC. Thus, his design refers to classic, functional and essential formulations without renouncing formal beauty, combined with an intelligent use of new materials.
The Tuman armchair was produced by Levesta (Granollers) between 1969 and 1990, and from 1991 by BD. Pep Bonet created the Tuman armchair out of the need to create a piece of furniture suitable for the spaces he was building, a modern, formally original, comfortable and relatively inexpensive seat. The formal reference for this design is the Tucuman bird, and despite its sinuousness it gives the impression that its structure is composed of a single piece. The large cushion that forms the seat is supported by steel leaf springs, which originally accounted for thirty percent of the production cost, and which give the chair great elasticity and comfort. The original model is upholstered in skai, a symbol of modernity in the sixties and seventies, and in fact the Tuman armchair won Bonet the 1974 design prize in the competition for furniture upholstered in this material at the Spanish Furniture Fair in Valencia.
With the passage of time the furniture lost its original dimensions as the springs deteriorated. In 1991 Bonet took the original model as a reference and redesigned it, introducing some changes: the seat height was increased by 5 cm, and new springs were created, as well as the design being upholstered in both skai and leather.
Pep Bonet is a Catalan architect and designer trained at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, a member of Studio PER together with Cristian Cirici, Lluís Clotet and Óscar Tusquets, and a founding partner of BD Ediciones de Diseño. He has won awards such as the FAD Interior Architecture Award and the Delta ADI-FAD, among others.