Hans Coray isn’t a well-known designer. However, his Landi chair is a design classic. It’s survived since the 1930s.

The Landi Chair is an important piece of 20th-century design history. It was made for the Swiss National Exhibition (Schweizer Landesausstellung) in 1939. Its designer, Hans Coray, created a new type of chair with a three-dimensionally moulded seat shell and a separate base.

The clear structure of the chair made out of only aluminium is made up of two parts. First, a pair of U-shaped profiles connected by welded crossbeams make a self-supporting frame that serves as both the legs and low armrests. This base holds up a seat shell that makes the most of what the material can do.

The 91 punched holes not only keep the shell’s weight down and make it flexible, but they also give the graceful Landi its signature look.

Background

Coray entered this world in 1906, having been born in Zurich. To this end, he attended university and ultimately earned a doctorate in Romance linguistics. He struck out on his own in 1930 as a furniture maker. Industrial design was always his primary focus.

Using cutting-edge aluminium techniques, Coray produced a lightweight and rigid seat shell. The extruded base of a Landi chair. For mass-produced chairs, the arrangement of a seat shell on a base that doesn’t need to be supported by anything else quickly became the norm.

At the Swiss National Exhibition in 1939, Coray’s innovative chair was used in both indoor and outdoor pavilions. The Landi show inspired the chair’s name. It was an emblem of Switzerland’s progressiveness. It was featured on a stamp commemorating Switzerland’s most iconic designs in 2004.

Design Classic

From time to time, the chair has been produced. With some tweaks, Vitra will resume production. The goal of the chair’s creators in 2015 is for it to be as widely used as the original was in 1939.