Gubi extends Pierre Paulin’s Pacha Collection.

The first sketches that Pierre Paulin (1927-2009) drew for what was to become the Pacha Collection were simple pencil outlines that resembled illustrative clouds. One of those sketches went on to become the Pacha Lounge Chair that he designed for Mobilier International (a former French company) in 1975. Reputedly an evolution of his Blublub Collection for Artifort three years previously, the design was the result of extensive research into the notion of comfort.

Gubi reissued the Pacha Lounge Chair in 2018 and is now expanding the collection to include new designs: the Pacha Lounge Chair with armrests, Pacha Sofas with two to five seats and the Pacha Ottoman – plus the option to create your own modular configurations. Basic modules – the Pacha Lounge Chair centre section, the Pacha Lounge Chair with a right or a left armrest only, the ottoman and an optional armrest to go between the modules – enable endless combinations to adapt to changing needs and environments – just as Paulin originally intended. Now we can all sit upon a whole cloud formation.

When the Pacha Collection was designed in 1975, it replaced the austerity of post-war design with a more organic approach, reflecting the changing design style of the time. Utilizing new innovations in bent plywood and foam technology, the generously curved forms of the collection were conceived, first and foremost, to serve the human body. Their rounded outlines and perfectly considered proportions offer high levels of comfort.

Named after a high-ranking honorific title within the Ottoman Empire, the Pacha Collection pioneered low-level living; a modern way of sitting that raised the sitter slightly off the floor with a low base instead of traditional chair legs. Paulin managed to bring elegance to the plump form of this new typology by tracing the foam and upholstery with inward-inclined stitching lines that enhance its shape and hint at the craftsmanship required to perfect this seemingly simple form.

Related: Chiara by Mario Bellini, 2020 Re-edition by Flos.

[Images courtesy of Gubi.]