Waka Waka curls colourful metal into curved shapes for Ribbon furniture collection

Los Angeles studio Waka Waka has designed Ribbon, an undulating furniture collection made from steel and aluminium decorated with saturated colours, for Japanese manufacturer Benex’s Eetal project.

Eetal, which presented a selection of sheet-metal furniture during design festival 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen this year, commissions designers to find uses for Benex’s aluminium and steel sheets.

For Waka Waka, which normally works with plywood, it was an opportunity to expand on the studio’s previous work.

“I primarily use Baltic birch plywood at our studio as our signature material,” Waka Waka designer Shinichiro Okuda told Dezeen. “For this collaboration, I wanted to explore the design possibilities of metal, but specifically using a sheet material as I approach plywood.”

The Ribbon collection comprises a chair, a table and a stool in different colours, as well as smaller accessories, including a tray, a clothes hanger and two different clothes racks.

All of the pieces were designed using simple geometric shapes, such as circles, squares and arches, and feature details including ribbon-like glossy, folded edges.

“Metal gives a feeling of coolness, structure, and sometimes confinement,” Okuda said.

“The ribbon was a way to create a fluid line quality, imparting warmth and a sense of nature. Also, we wanted to accentuate the qualities of the material rather than mask or hide them.”

Waka Waka also wanted the pieces to have an industrial feel to underline the inherent qualities of the aluminium and steel used for the furniture.

“Referencing industrial colours, hardware and connection points was intentional to present the metal as metal, not as a substitute for plywood,” Okuda said.

The Ribbon pieces come in colours including yellow, pink and black, as well as a blue hue that Okuda says was chosen after the studio came across it when visiting a Benex factory.

“We picked the first colour, blue, after noticing it during our first factory visit,” he said.

“The blue was one of the existing standard factory colours used for many industrial products they manufacture, and it is a blue specific to Japan,” Okuda continued.

“I still wanted to accentuate the materiality of the metal, so this industrial blue felt very fitting.”

To match the blue colour, Okuda chose hues from Japan’s prosperous Edo period.

“We picked other colour combinations from the Edo period,” he said. “The saturated colours are pairings that feel both recognisable and livable.”

Overall, Waka Waka aimed to give the cold metal material a warmer feel.

“Metal gives a feeling of coolness, structure, and sometimes confinement,” Okuda said. “The ribbon was a way to create a fluid line quality, imparting warmth and a sense of nature.”

The Ribbon collection has been shown in its own exhibition in Tokyo and Osaka and will be presented in Los Angeles in September, followed by exhibitions in Fukuoka and Nagasaki.

Another metal design recently featured on Dezeen is a Dieter Rams door handle that was redesigned in an all-metal version.

The photography is by Kenta Hasegawa.

Ribbon will be shown at Small Office, 3465 Casitas Avenue, Los Angeles, California, from September 12 to 27. See Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events around the world.

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