Canopy Chair Collection by LAYER and Raeburn

Benjamin Hubert of experience design agency LAYER has collaborated with responsible fashion design company RAEBURN on Canopy Collection. Comprising four rocking chairs and two screens, the innovative furniture pieces explore form and structure using recycled parachute material and welded steel frames. With both studios sharing a passion for sustainability, the collection celebrates innovative thinking from both the industrial design and fashion worlds.

Celebrating a shared interest in recontextualising undervalued materials, the studio’s explored the RAEBURN archives, looking at how surplus parachutes were to create iconic fashion. From there, the team’s developed ways to utilize the material for furniture design, focusing their research on surplus ex-military and aircraft brake parachutes. Their unique structure, translucency, and tactility was of particular interest, leading to the layering of ultra-thin ‘rip stop’ nylon to create durable furniture pieces with innovative forms.

Using the strict geometry of the steel frames as a base, the Canopy Collection experiments with forward-thinking recycled parachute upholstery. Each with the same framework, the four rocking chairs showcase different qualities of the parachute material, from a highly-controlled and simple expression to a raw, sculptural form. The construction of the steel frame reflects the expression of the parachute material: in the more minimal format, the frame is polished and finely finished, while in the most expressive format, the welded joins are left in a raw state that showcases the production process.

The screens draw focus to the way light travels through the translucent parachute material, their form dictated by the way the material can be inherently manipulated based on its structure. The graphic colour blocked designs are derived from the parachute’s structure and stitch lines. Statement pieces, the screens are intended for use in a variety of settings such as domestic, retail and hospitality. The entire Canopy Collection channels the semantics of a parachute in flight, with the lounge chairs rocking back and forth and the re-configurable screen taking inspiration from the section and construction of a wing.