Tecta : D9

Wolfgang Hartauer

D9
The aesthetic of the never-ending line

New take on the Bauhaus’ original idea of “floating and flying”: with the D9, Wolfgang Hartauer puts smart geometry into the spotlight. Good posture for the body and aesthetics for the mind.

After some 100 years Marcel Breuer has now received a contemporary answer to his dream of floating and flying. The D9 is a new take on the iconic cantilever chair. Combining opulence with radical minimalism, lavish on the sides, held in a signature floating position in the front.

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“We wanted to create the cantilever chair of tomorrow,” says its designer Wolfgang Hartauer, “because the story of the chair without hind legs is far from over.” This is an allusion to Tecta’s cantilever chair museum. For him this extraordinary collection featuring originals by Breuer, Mies van der Rohe and Prouvé served as a source of inspiration and research at the same time. “I was particularly fascinated by Marcel Breuer’s vision of the gravity-defying chair. I wanted to use this visionary idea that we would sit on an elastic column of air in the future and give it a contemporary twist.”

Hartauer boldly spent two years designing, discarding and extracting. Then his dynamic design was finished. “I didn’t want to create a concept chair, where you have to switch to the couch after half an hour, but a piece of furniture so comfortable that you want to spend the entire evening sitting on it.”

The D9 exemplifies the precision that is the hallmark of all of Hartauer’s designs. The inventor and craftsman turned designer, whose tables roll, trays tilt, and whose accessories can be pushed away effortlessly, remains true to his roots. The D9 is also full of motion in the best sense of the word, that of floating and flying.

“It can rock both backwards and forwards. In other words, the open seat area, the frame geometry, adapts to your posture and moves with you.” The new Hartauer, or new cantilever chair, also follows the tubular design of the Breuer chair, the aesthetic of the endless line.

The next question Wolfgang Hartauer explored was not just about aesthetics, but about sitting comfortably. Both the back and sides of the D9 are crescent-shaped, inclined, but with round edges encircling the sitter like a shawl. The essence of the D9 is minimalism: less not more. But today comfort, opulence and freshness are all part of it – as is a solution to a small imperfection. One that used to plunge the user from the Olympus of cantilever chairs to the bottom of reality: the overturning moment. “The great thing about geometry is that we can use it to remedy this shortcoming. Shifted backwards, the body’s centre of gravity is no longer on the front edge,” explains Hartauer.

Hence, the D9 is more than just a nice gesture. The D9 embodies Bauhaus continues in the very best sense. Transpose traditions, think the future, shape the present. Aesthetics without sacrifices, but dedicated to the concept of aesthetics and comfortable sitting.