Can you make metal appear soft and inviting? Sure, some cars like the VW Beetle look softer than most, and if you’ve ever seen any of Jeff Koons’ work, he sure knows how to make objects look soft despite their metallic polished finish. However, these aren’t objects you necessarily sit on. You sit inside the VW Beetle, not on its metal exterior, so that softness is purely visual and doesn’t necessarily translate to a tactile experience. The Bubble Chair, however, makes ‘metallic softness’ a multisensorial experience. A Silver Winner of the 2021 A’ Design Award, the chair explores dichotomies. It’s soft on appearance and hard to touch, looks playful but is equally sombre with its grey finish, and since it’s made from metal, it remains cold in cooler atmospheres, and becomes hot in warmer temperatures. Like designer Grigorii Gorkovenko says, “what can be said about BUBBLE for sure – is that nobody can call it boring.”

The chair’s unique shape is the result of an unconventional combination of injection molding and hand-crafted labor. As much as 80 kilograms (176 pounds) of aluminum is used per chair, which is then laboriously hand-finished to give it its satin texture.

Calling his design style ‘serious fun’, Grigorii Gorkovenko took 8 months to put the chair together.

The Bubble Chair is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Grigorii Gorkovenko