SAYL Black

Yves Béhar

Suspending a chair

Béhar, who calls San Francisco home, began by looking at designs that deliver the most with the least. And then he took a look at his city’s best-known landmark: the Golden Gate Bridge. Béhar wondered, could the engineering principles of a suspension bridge be applied to a chair?

The notion of using a suspension tower to support an unframed suspension back meant that the flexible elastomer suspension material could be stretched in a way that provided the greatest tension at points where support is needed and the least in areas that would allow for the most expansive range of motion.