CHARTING A CREATIVE PARTNERSHIP
“So much of design is about making connections… from the past to the future and, in the case of collaboration, from idea to product, from design to craft, from thinking to making”
Shanghai-based Neri&Hu are internationally celebrated for architectural projects that reflect deep consideration of history, collective and personal memory, material, and human interaction. Their products encapsulate the broad influences of their architectural projects into compact forms, allowing their vision to occupy any environment.
De La Espada has collaborated with Neri&Hu since 2013, crafting each furniture design to the highest standard at our workshop in Portugal. Our combined expertise allows us to create products that are as rigorously designed and engineered as they are tactile, beautifully detailed and crafted.
Looking at an overview of Neri&Hu seating for De La Espada, the evolution of our partnership becomes visually clear, the depth, nuance, and through-lines revealing themselves in the collective. Here, we take you through a retrospective of this seating, with some words from Neri&Hu co-founders Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu.
“So much of design is about making connections… from the past to the future and, in the case of collaboration, from idea to product, from design to craft, from thinking to making. We learn so much from collaborating with different partners, and in the case of De La Espada, the making is so important — the vision of the founders, Luis and Fatima, what they set out to do with creating a laboratory of experiments [and] an advanced way of crafting the design,” Rossana Hu.
2013: DUET CHAIR AND SOLO CHAIR
When our partnership with Neri&Hu began in 2013, we launched two of their iconic chair designs: Duet Chair and Solo Chair. Both chairs reflect Neri&Hu’s interest in design history, as well as their passion for craft and the user experience.
Duet Chair
Designed as a variation on the classic Thonet bent-wood tradition, the Duet Chair is shaped by two continuous curves of timber crafted from a series of carved components joined with mortise and tenon; the visible join lines and pronounced wood grain celebrate the honest beauty of its making. Originally conceived for Mercato, a Neri&Hu restaurant project in Shanghai for chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Duet was designed to provide a soft and warm counterpoint to a raw industrial space.
Solo Chair
The Solo Chair originated as a core concept for Neri&Hu’s design of the boutique hotel Waterhouse in Shanghai. With its cocooning shell and warm materials, it anchors private and public spaces, bridging the domestic and the communal. The form is an homage to Eames; an imagining of what they might have designed 50 years later. A favourite for projects worldwide, the Solo Chair expanded over the years into a series of seating including a bar stool, lounge chair, and two-seater sofa.
2015: SHAKER CHAIR AND COMMUNE STOOL
Not all Neri&Hu seating emerged from their architectural projects; some were pure investigations into concept, historical movements, or tectonics. Two such seats launched in 2015: Shaker Chair and Commune Stool.
Shaker Chair
On invitation from the Shaker foundation in the USA, Neri&Hu designed pieces that reimagine Shaker furniture, embodying the principles of the Shaker movement and its history, while thoughtfully modernising. Neri&Hu's reinterpretation of the traditional ladder-back chair has clean perpendicular lines and a mildly reclining body. Horizontal struts create a visual levity and allow the chair to be hung on the wall, as the Shakers would have done. A simple, honest, and utilitarian approach.
“We’ve always really loved the philosophy behind [Shaker] designs because it’s not just a look, it’s about how you live,” Neri&Hu.
Commune Stool
Originally designed for the Das Haus exhibition at the 2015 Cologne Fair, Commune Stool was part of Neri&Hu's vision of the future home as one imbued with ideas of community and a social collective. Its form references the everyday stools found in the Chinese social community, and its construction visually expresses a communal spirit with multiple legs working together in support.
“Commune is so simple and yet the craft behind it is so immaculate. It reminded us of the everyday of the Shanghai lane houses. Our kids grew up in those conditions, and we [see it as] an important celebration for the community that is very much part of our practice,” Lyndon Neri.
2016: CAPO CHAIR
Capo Dining Armchair was created by Neri&Hu as part of their interior design for the Capo restaurant in Shanghai. The simple and modern form is enriched with tailoring details that evoke old-world sensibilities; a reflection of the interior design concept based on a basilica. The chair’s construction reflects an exploration into a design that could be flat packed.
”If you look at Capo, it could be disassembled and all pressed within a particular square. It started with that idea; that purpose and meaning is a practical one,” Lyndon Neri.
Over time, Capo expanded into a series that includes a bar stool and lounge chair, each featuring the same fusion of modernity and historic detailing as its predecessor.
2021: PETIT CHAIR AND 98.6°F OUTDOOR CHAIR
Two seats emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, representing resilience and adaptation: Petit Chair and 98.6°F Outdoor Chair.
Petit Chair
Neri&Hu created Petit Chair as part of their interior design for Papi restaurant, Paris, a project that came to fruition in 2021. The chair’s small footprint maximises seating capacity in the compact space, and the design is defined by its essentialist tectonics: three or four wooden legs support an upholstered seat. With a pared back form and detailed craft, it carries a temperament of understated elegance and composure.
“In the midst of the global COVID-19 landscape, the launch of this chair embodied an air of optimism: an ode to conviviality, a nod to the spirit of community, and a firm gesture of support to the hospitality industry,” Neri&Hu.
98.6°F Outdoor Chair
This chair brings superb design and craft to moments spent outdoors, celebrating the rare moments of togetherness the pandemic afforded. Though deceptively simple in its outward presence, it features tectonic sophistication: using a pinwheel construction, each of the three axes reinforce one another, resulting in a robust and durable piece without any additional under-seat support. The chair’s name, 98.6°F, references this dichotomy: what we take for granted as the “normal” body temperature is in fact our bodies’ highly calibrated ability to balance between a temperature too high or too low to maintain our health. The 98.6°F Outdoor Collection includes further seating and tables for versatile gathering options.
“98.6°F was [launched during COVID], wherein being healthy was important. 98.6°F is the body temperature where it's not too cold and not too hot. An outdoor collection that depicts a particular period in time,” Neri&Hu.
2025: OCTOBER CHAIR
Neri&Hu embraces philosophy in their design as much as they do structural engineering and craft. The October Chair is an excellent example of this; its malleable leather seat emerged from an experimental approach to working with the material, and progressed to capture the spirit of autumn and the deeper meaning of times of change.
Neri&Hu envision the October Chair not merely as an object, but as the material embodiment of a threshold — a quiet manifesto for the new season. The chair is crafted from solid, enduring timber speaking to permanence, and supple leather signifying transience. Intricate detailing brings dimension and complexity to a simple form.
“October, with its crisp decay and golden transitions, serves as the perfect temporal metaphor: a month that cradles both the melancholy of endings and the promise of renewal. More than furniture, October is a provocation. A call to inhabit the discomfort of transformation, to wrestle — as all meaningful beginnings must — with the weight of what is and the lightness of what might be,” Neri&Hu.
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All photography by Yuki Sugiura except outdoor image by Carlos Teixeira
